Peachy
So today is the coldest day we’ve had so far–don’t know about last night; it was a hardly worth complaining about 29°F* when hellhounds and I went to bed**–but it was 24 when I reeled downstairs this morning, not at all early, knocking icicles out of the way to reach the hellhound crate***.
I gave up waiting for the temperature to rise to something reasonable and we went out bravely for our walk among the ice floes and polar bears. Because of the sleet and brief thaw we’d had yesterday today was extremely gorgeous, with a sparkling rime on everything and halos of frozen fog. I thought about taking my camera and didn’t, and spent the walk looking around and going, wow, I should have brought my camera–no I’m glad I didn’t, I’d've had to keep stopping to use it, and probably taking my gloves off, and I’m FREEZING to death.† There was a wind, and you could hear it going Mwa ha ha ha ha ha. I’ve never put a coat on a dog unless it’s old or sick, so hellhounds are out there as they come, so it’s probably my own fault that they’re mostly in red-shift except when they hit the ends of their leads.
We got back at 1 pm and it was still only 26 degrees.†† I was in the attic, of course, when there was a brisk knock on the front door. I slithered down the stair-ladder and poked my head out my bedroom window to tell whoever it was not to go away . . . which was long enough for the sight of two very tall thin cardboard boxes bearing the inscription LIVE PLANTS to imprint itself painfully on my eyeballs. LIVE PLANTS? And, furthermore, enormous LIVE PLANTS? I am obviously leading a more sinful life than I realised, or this wouldn’t be happening to me.
Hi, said the deliveryman, beaming. He looked so pleased with himself–not to mention having hauled both large boxes up the half-stair to the door–that my faint hope he might only be wanting directions was crushed.††† What are they? I said, trying not to snarl.
Well, he said, one’s a peach and one’s a nectarine.
OH GODS, I said, memory of past errors rising to confound me.‡
Yes, exactly, he said. I really didn’t want to leave them if you weren’t in.
So I signed for them and he went off whistling–having kindly carried them into my kitchen for me–and I am now the proud possessor of one very well-grown patio nectarine and one ditto patio peach.‡‡ Which are both highly not frost hardy. I’ve put them by the kitchen door, next to Tipsy Imperial Concubine‡‡‡ and her semi-heeled-in friends§ who are busy leafing out, they’ve been indoors so long.
I have also sent the grower an email, which I reproduce in its entirety:
My peach and nectarine trees arrived *today*! The coldest day of the fiercest cold spell we’ve had in twenty years! Remind me NOT to order from you again because your shipping department HAS NO SENSE!
* * *
* How quickly we adjust. No we don’t. I’m not at all adjusted. I want temperatures in the 40s.
** variously. They still sleep in the dog bed. I still sleep in the human bed.
*** Swathed in blankets, by the way, as well as generously lined within. I wish someone would wrap up my bed in blankets once I’m already in it: it’s a four-poster, so it would make a very good crate.^ I turn the central heating off overnight, of course. The Aga will keep the pipes from freezing. I hope. I now have something like half an inch of ice on the water butt by the back door, and am unable by hand to break the hole I made two days ago to get a watering-can in any bigger. Hellhound crap freezes so solid that if I didn’t feel like picking it up the night before, when I’m still steamy from my bath and only wearing a dressing gown, which is to say I don’t feel like going outdoors and picking it up, I don’t automatically have to go out with them the next morning–when I am also wearing a dressing gown–and picking it up before they step in it and bring it indoors. Does this count as a Glad Game item?
^ Yes, say the hellhounds. Yes it would.
† Except for my neoprene-clad toes. That still leaves a lot of the rest of me. I gave away my down vest a few years after I moved over here, and I don’t remember what happened to my padded jeans, and I can’t find my serious-weather gloves: the gloves I skied my single season in almost forty years ago and later on drove a motorcycle in, and later yet an open MGB. I suppose they might have worn out.
†† Geranium death watch again: can’t take its battle gear off at this temperature, and I’m still uncertain how much (a) cardboard and plastic airbags can do and (b) how long a geranium and a rose known for whimsicality can survive in the dark. Even the sitting-room jungle gets a little chiaroscuro. It was supposed to warm up this weekend–it now being Friday evening–but we’re due another vicious frost tonight; they’re saying maybe Sunday for the thaw. Atlas comes to hang the grow light on Monday, and I’m thinking I may just ask him to help me carry the damn planter with the geranium and the rose in it indoors and the hell with it. In which case I suppose I will also have to ask him to help me carry in the not quite hardy clematis and the other geranium which are bundled up in towels and bubblewrap–they’re in the garden next to the house wall, so theoretically they have a better chance than the one you know, which is riding the bow-wave of any east wind that comes in over the roofs of the houses at the bottom of my little hill. –At which point I’m not sure what I do about the sofa.
††† You’d be surprised. But most English houses have names, not numbers, so even in a tiny street like mine if you’re not looking at what you’re expecting you may not be sure where to look next.
‡ I think I even told you I’d ordered them. No escape by denial. Sigh.
‡‡ And a remarkable amount of cardboard packaging, none of it the least use for muffling cold-stunned plants, however.
‡‡‡ http://www.classicroses.co.uk/roses/t/tipsy_imperial_concubine.html In case you’ve forgotten. Please note that Peter Beales is offering 20% sale price off all roses till the end of the month. Aaaaaugh. Well, I know I’m losing stuff in this weather, there will be gaps to fill . . . and either this cold spell will be OVER by the end of the month, when I might have new things to heel in, or I’ll have a grow light in the sitting-room. And a new sofa-shaped plant stand. I will also need a tarpaulin for the carpet. Sigh.
§ Which is to say in a bucket with some dirt
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