Winter looks so much more inviting when the sun is shining. I returned to cutting the edges of the lower lawn, and disentangling the remains of the yellow flowered climbing Dicentra scandens out of the Magnolia stellata in the ditch bed. The Dicentra bloomed for weeks, well into the autumn, but two frosty nights finally put an end to it. It isn't a plant you often see for sale, suggesting it is not easy to keep in pots, but several catalogues offer the seed, which is how I got mine. It dies back completely each winter then makes yards of growth pretty rapidly in the spring, and I can imagine that in a garden centre setting it would busily grow into its neighbours then break when anybody tried to move it, making it physically difficult to sell. It can't be that nobody else likes it, since who would not like a climber with dainty glaucous leaves generously studded with lemon coloured lockets usefully late in the year? People who don't like yellow flowers, I suppose.
It was a disappointment to realise that after the morning's promising start it had begun to rain while I was eating my lunch. I knew rain was forecast, but not until after dark. That could be the last I manage to do in the garden for a while, since the rest of the Met Office five day forecast is for rain. So much for dreams of finishing cutting the edges. Admittedly I didn't just do edges this morning, I picked leaves out of the ditch bed and raked more leaves off the lawn, and weeded out rogue Herb Robert seedlings and scraps of grass from the ditch bed. The pointed snouts of the snowdrops are already showing above the soil, and the sooner I can get everything done in that bed, including cutting back the overhanging willow branches, the better. If only it would not rain. The Systems Administrator trying to cheer me up pointed out that the forecast might be wrong, and I suppose it might be. Here's hoping.
Instead I turned to the thorny task of tidying up my desk. Step one, which was to literally tidy the desk, was easy, as I simply took everything off the desk and put it on the floor, then wiped the accumulated dust and fluff away with a clean dishcloth. Step two, which is to sort out the pile of mess on the floor, is taking a little longer, though I'm making progress. We have a great many A4 envelopes. I don't know why we have so many, but put them in a box which made me feel better. Manuscript notes of past music society committee meetings which have since been typed up and circulated could go in the paper recycling, along with a couple of 2005 magazines that I'd been using to adjust the angle of my projector until somebody showed me how to use the screw under the projector table, and an invitation to a FTSE 100 company AGM that had already passed and that I wouldn't have attended anyway. That made me feel better as well.
I found two more stashes of seeds, including two packets of Hesperis matronalis. More sweet rocket, just what I don't need, but some fresh seed of Cosmos 'Sensation' mixed will be useful, though one packet would have been sufficient and I unearthed two. I wish garden magazines would vary their free seeds a bit more. There was another packet of oxeye daisies, and I grew some this summer from seed that came with Amateur Gardening, while I've got more packets of sweet pea seed than anybody could use unless they were going in for commercial cut flower production.
Some things I was hoping would turn up haven't yet. I bought a birthday card at one of the London galleries that was just right for somebody, and even showed it cock-a-hoop to the Systems Administrator when I got home, but it isn't in my box of greetings cards or the top drawer of my filing tray. Their birthday is fairly soon so that's a bit of a nuisance, since my chances of finding anything as good in Colchester are slim. And the hard work of filing things I need to keep has barely started, since all I've managed so far is to punch holes in them for the lever arch files. Still, if it does rain for the next four days I'll have plenty of time to sort it all out.
No comments:
Post a Comment