It’s turned a little colder, though has been sunny all day. Cold or not it’s a joy to get out into the garden, to watch Graham finishing off the ‘big hammer’ phase of the project, and to serve tea to order.
The ground is clear now, with all the overgrown shrubs and weed trees gone. We’ll give it a good dose of weedkiller so soon as the green starts to break through and then, apart from a beech hedge along the back, we’ll leave it fallow while our dreams and designs mature. A shed/workshop and a small water feature are indicated, but we’re so overcome with the amount of light and space that have been revealed that we want to be sure we’ve got our thinking right.
The next outdoor project, so he says, is to be the front garden, where the rank, mossy grass and wrecked rock garden will be scraped up and relaid. Graham wants a nice piece of grass there, for the sake of respectability and to impress the neighbours. He wants a nice piece of grass there so much that he threatens to put Astroturf down if the proper stuff won’t grow.
I haven’t enjoyed winter very much this year, though I’m deeply thankful to have had no colds, and just the one ritual and very mild 17-hour encounter with swine ‘flu when Graham had his horrid week and a half. Even so it’s been cold and drear, and I’ve been disinclined to go outside the door except when necessary.
So I feel no need to apologise now for wanting to go sit in the sun, close my eyes and let the light drive the shadows away. And to let my thoughts and memories wander where they will. There’s a time machine inside old men. You just close your eyes, give the navigation control switch a good clout with a large spanner and see where the random principle takes you.
Today I’ve been doing a lot of that.
