The garden talk I've promised to do next month is starting to come into shape. That's a relief, since it's not a topic I've ever covered before. When I agreed to do it, the booking was a year hence, which seemed more than ample time to prepare. I kept an eye out for any useful nuggets that could be incorporated, and that was about it. As 2014 drew to a close I began to think I should get on with pulling my ideas together, but did nothing about it as a wonky arm made it difficult to type and other things kept coming up, and then the cold season began with a dismal series of headaches and snuffles.
I hate not being ready for things. I have regular dreams in which I am approaching the end of a university course but have not done one of the core modules, or am still managing clients' money but mysteriously not receiving any valuations or making investment decisions, while the quarterly meeting draws ever closer. I have worked with people who always as a matter of course left everything to the last minute, and claimed to need the stimulus of the deadline to get their brains working. My brain is generally quite stimulated enough with about three weeks to go.
The choice at the start of the year was whether to start with the beekeepers' accounts, my tax return, or the talk. The accounts had the shortest deadline and so rose to the top of the list. The AGM was going to be held on the fourth Thursday of January because under our rules it always is, I needed to be able to talk coherently about the accounts to a room full of people, and the auditor needed time to inspect them first. No contest.
The tax return came next because it had the second shortest deadline, and the Inland Revenue fines you a hundred pounds for late submission. I hate doing my tax return. I expect most people do, having to line up all those pieces of paper and make frantic phone calls to fill in the gaps, or hunt laboriously through old online statements. I especially hate the fact that as withholding tax on dividends cannot be reclaimed under any circumstances, it does not make any difference to the end result what my dividend income is, provided that it leaves me safely below the threshold in total for paying higher rate tax, so half of the paper chasing is entirely pointless. The tax return took up most of Saturday, and yesterday I took the day off because I still felt so cold ridden I couldn't get my head round the lecture.
This morning I corrected the minutes of the last music society meeting for the chairman's comments and circulated them. It's just as well I got her to check first, since I'd transplanted one future event to the wrong year. The minutes weren't playing so heavily on my mind since I did not have to present them in person and there was no financial penalty for failure. It was nice to get them out of the way, but prioritising them may have been a delaying tactic, because after that there was nothing for it but the lecture. Which is now coming on. One more burst of energy should see me with a working script, and then I need some images. I felt much better about it once I decided I was definitely going to tell them about ponds first, and then show them some pictures, rather than try to find pictures to illustrate every point. That was based on sheer practicalities, given that I don't have the resources of a full documentary unit, but should work quite well. People can nod off if you turn the lights out at the beginning and talk to them in the dark.
I did walk down the garden before lunch, to see what it had been doing in my absence, and the scent of the two Daphne bholua hit even my bunged up nose as I rounded the corner of the house. The Sarcocca confusa is smelling strongly as well, while snowdrops are coming through everywhere. The arborists made a very tidy job stacking the fallen birch in the wood, but the debris needs to come out as soon as possible, since I know there is a good sheet of snowdrops right under where they've stacked the brushwood. A holly tree that was partially uprooted as the birch came down and is now growing almost horizontally needs cutting to ground level to encourage vertical regrowth, and there are a load of brambles that need pulling up. More of these things anon, as soon as I've finished the talk, and the cold air doesn't send my nose into free flow.
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