in sickness and in health

Just as I began to feel as though I was recovering from the bug enough to want to re-engage with normal life, the Systems Administrator has gone down with it.  The SA's decline has been slower than mine, since I went from working full tilt in the dahlia bed to lying in my own bed with aching limbs and a temperature in less than four hours, while the SA has been feeling intermittently chilly and nauseous for the past week.  Yesterday morning the SA looked so woebegone that I offered to get supper, as a gesture of goodwill, then by lunchtime the SA had revived enough to propose a barbecue and offer to buy the food.  However, while lasting just long enough to light the charcoal, the SA had to admit that the chills and nausea were back in spades, and retreat to bed.

I offered to help make up the spare bed properly, since the SA spent two uncomfortable nights while I was ill sleeping in the ironing room in a sleeping bag with a tog rating that was far too high for the circumstances.  As I hunted around for the spare bedroom duvet the nasty suspicion crept up on me that we do not currently have a spare double duvet.  I think we filched it for our room after one of the cats did something unspeakable on our bed.  The SA said that there was a single duvet in the ironing room, which I must admit I'd completely forgotten about, since it lives on the bed under a nice blue and white checked blanket and an everlasting pile of ironing.  I even managed to find the cover for it, but had better add spare room double duvet to my shopping list.

This morning the SA was not better, but was not particularly worse.  I thought the SA did not seem so ill as I had been, but the SA did not seem pleased by this comparison.  I promised to stock up on Lucozade and mini-cheddars, and left the invalid surrounded by more electronic equipment than was carried on the fist moon mission.  At least there's the cricket on the radio.

In the garden I finally saw a couple of toads.  I disturbed a green one while trimming the edges of the lower lawn, though fortunately without amputating any of its limbs.  They are pretty adept at crouching down below the blades of the shears.  The second, a handsome spotted specimen, was hopping around in full view on the lawn.  More depressing were the two baby birds that were dumped on the lawn one after the other as the day went on.  They were fairly large, and at the stage of starting to sprout some feathers, though I couldn't tell you the species.  Some nest must have got robbed out, but it seems wasteful of the predator to simply leave them lying in the middle of the path, instead of eating them.

The primroses, hellebores and some of the azaleas in the ditch bed had started to flag badly, and I ran the hose on them while I edged and weeded, moving it at regular intervals.  I irrigate the garden very little, but thought they'd better have one good soaking to keep them going.

The hazel and willow trees along the ditch bed have grown out again, and are casting too much shade even for an area that is meant to be shady, so I got the pole lopper out and started to prune out some of the overhanging twigs.  I had to stop before I'd finished the job, since it is hard work holding up the pole, and was giving me a crick in my neck peering upwards into the canopy. Something to return to on Tuesday, or perhaps Wednesday, which is my next scheduled full day of work in the garden.  I feel rather cautious about looking forward to it, after how last week turned out.