Mad March

I’ve been tied up with all manner of “stuff” of late and somehow March has slipped through my fingers. A catch up is well overdue and a combination of truly miserable weather and the blissful peace of an empty house (I have been largely deserted for various holidays, meetings, lectures and what have you) means today is the day (FYI immediately after typing that I wandered off to make lunch……the procrastination streak winding through my DNA is rather wide).

First off, excuses. It was mum’s 80th birthday on Friday and significant time has been invested by the Ruthven Collective in the clandestine organisation of presents and a family shindig. Auntie Lois came down from the far north on the (frankly implausible given the weather) excuse of helping with the garden. Ishbel and Martin reorganised their holiday arrangements to incorporate flying out from Edinburgh and came up with the mission of taking mum out for the day and not letting her back until I had baked the cakes and ferried them over to Anne next door for safe keeping. Lachlan made the Costco run and hid in Luigi’s making chilli. Keith hired a bus to ferry over the Selkirk crew. I lied through my teeth whenever caught doing anything suspicious (with a worrying degree of talent it must be said). We came a whisker’s length from disaster on the morning of the big day when Mum called in her marker on an offer I had made a few days before to trim her hair. It went fine last time, but I must have forgotten the technique and as it got shorter and shorter, as the essential evening up progressed, I was beginning to sweat. However, after a highly vigorous rough dry (no hairdryer in the house….) and a bit of tweaking by Lois with the nail scissors, it was really quite all right. Martin and Ishbel plied mum with a few stiffeners in the pub at 7 to be on the safe side whilst we hustled the trippers on the Selkirk bus into the party palace. By 7.30 we were lined up and ready to go and actually it was rather lovely to have everyone around for a jolly without the need for a funeral first.

The pattern of one or two sunny dry days followed by a liberal soaking has continued. The river has yo-yoed up and down, much to the irritation of the oyster catchers. These noisy fellows prefer to nest on the stoney “beaches” which emerge on the sunny days but disappear like Atlantis after a couple of days of dreich. Lyra, who will scamper like a loon in the sun has taken to expressing her displeasure on rainy walks by slipping her lead and heading straight back to the car. (After a morning ticking off on this topic, she has now flounced off to the living room) For my part, this just results in lots of jobs half done. There’s a yoga bag for mum in bits on the floor of the garret, a half finished top on my needles and Keiths yellow jumper has not made it beyond the concept phase. Down in the greenhouse I have three trays of seeds sown, a huge bag of unopened packets yet to go and some very sad canna tubers to pot up. A tray of plants bought over a week ago with a view to a revamp of the gravel garden continue to languish in the new alpine trough I have yet to fill and I should also declare two bags of fancy crocosmia corms nestling amongst unopened post in the letter rack. In the garden, if places weeded were expressed as a decimal fraction of places needing weeded the result might look like a homeopathic dose…

And yet everything continues to grow, so perhaps I overstate the importance of my hand on the tiller. Anyway, see for yourselves..