Home Alone

Circumstances have taken everyone off recently and I am left behind self isolating with symptomless Covid. Well, I seem to be the only person who thinks the strawberries are a bit tasteless this year so I may have one symptom – the loss of taste thing (though it is not, as you will hear, reducing my enjoyment of other key foodstuffs so it may just be that I have more demanding fruit standards…).

I had great hopes for much garden productivity over this period but it has been just too hot. I’ve managed a couple of hours in the mornings but then largely pegged out and had to lurk in the shade till the evening. Today I tried to take a wheelbarrow of compost down to the beds at the start of the back track, having found a space for some of the campanula I grew from seed this year. Alas, having loaded it up and got it a little way up the hill I realised the tyre was fast going down. I made the rookie error of thinking it would be easier to go on up the hill than go back and pump the tyre. I practically needed CPR by the time I made it to the top of the rise.

Now really is not the time for any major effort in the garden. It is time to wander about in a wafty way like someone in an ITV3 mid evening crime drama, observing what works and what doesn’t whilst being ready, if needed, to take down a serial killer with a spinning rake. My horticultural observations thus far are largely to the effect that the garden is perhaps a little overstuffed. If I am to find a home for any new plants (or to rescue those which are suffering overbearing neighbours), some of the old lags need to be cut back substantially. Where I had a root out last autumn things look much better already. I have resolved to be much more confident of leaving a bit of space between things and to wield the chopper with gusto. I foresee an active September.

On the serial killer front it has been quiet so far, but I have a border spade in the porch ready for action.

I have watered the orchids but all other indoor chores have remained comprehensively ignored. It is far too hot to cook. Paperwork would be a fire hazard. I am saving the planet by eschewing hoovering and ironing (virtue is its own reward on that score..). Instead, as always happens when I am left to myself, there has been much reading into the small hours accompanied by some serious damage to the bar of Tony’s chocolate Keith left for me (Tony’s is, by the way, by far the best show in town for illicit munching – the heft of a Yorkie but seriously good quality chocolate – I commend it most heartily).

Keith is back tomorrow so I shall have to rejoin civilisation. In the meantime I am off to download a new book, top up my wine and finish off the chocolate……..