Guest Blog: The First Week – A Pictorial Pupdate
by B-Twin-1 (Who is getting a little more sleep now. Maybe.)
Day 1 - Tired but happy
Day 2 - Puppy Pile
Day 3 - Learning to really "work the system"
Day 5 - Lined up at the bar
Day 6 - Still hanging around the bar!
Day 6 - Exhausted from holding the bar up
Day 7 - A week old! (And learning to approach the bar from ALL angles!)
Day 7 - The Big Girl. Snoring. The Ultimate Squee Pic.
First Roses
I overslept by an hour and a half.
I feel like death on downers.
I decided, since I felt like mouldy hay anyway and had no good mood nor PEGASUS-producing energy to ruin, I’d make a lot of overdue phone calls. Like to the dentist. I try to avoid the dentist* when the ME is on the ascendant, because you can be run over by a bulldozer too many times. But this particular bout of ME has been going on for months and I can’t avoid the dentist forever.
They had a cancellation this afternoon! So I went to the dentist today!
Can it get any worse!
Yes!
I went round to Third House and the bathroom is a disaster. And they haven’t even started painting.
So let’s have some roses. I need cheering up.
The very first rose out this year was the wrong one. It should be Agnes or Mme Gregoire Staechelin–and I have been really looking forward to Agnes, she was new last year and didn’t flower–or possibly Old Blush, but Fru Dagmar Hastrup beat them all. Fru Dagmar is a terrific rose–starts early, stays late, keeps flowering even if you don’t deadhead her, and produces fabulous red hips and the foliage turns gold in autumn. And puts up with almost anything. She’ll grow in a pot, she’ll grow in the ground, she’ll grow in bad ground, she’ll grow in sun, she’ll grow in shade. She’s a rugosa, so she will also rip you to shreds if you approach her unwarily, but she’s worth it. Oh, and she smells good. She’ll also survive Midwestern winters. A friend wanted to plant a rose on her grandparents’ grave out in the middle of the prairie–and she rarely got out there herself because she lives at the other end of the state, so the poor rose wasn’t going to have any tending, even the first year when even a tough-as-old-boots rose usually needs help, like being watered regularly. That was five years ago and I believe Fru is beginning to take over the graveyard.
Frell. Frell frellfrellfrellfrellfrellfrellfrell. FRELL. Next is Old Blush, but WordPress the delicate, tremulous, and easily overwhelmed, wants the file smaller and Microsoft Sodding Picture (*&^%$£”!!!! Editor isn’t functioning this evening for some reason. I am so not having a good day.
All right. So. This is Mme Alfred Carriere, another terrific rose***. She and Mme Gregoire (Staechelin) grow up the same wall–the wall that is my undetached neighbour’s house wall, so it’s three storeys high: a wall just crying out for a rose or two–and this year, Mme Alfred’s fourth, she’s finally really getting going. Last two years Mme Gregoire has had it all her way: this year, at the moment, Mme Alfred is rioting out and Mme Gregoire is saying, huh? Is it that time already?
Mme Alfred, looking for the fourth storey. She’s been growing when I wasn’t looking: last year Mme Gregoire was clearly bigger and taller. I am remembering now, speaking of taking over graveyards, that my Mme Alfred at the old house was trying to take over the vegetable garden.
Dreaming Spires. English readers and soppy Anglophiles like myself will know that this refers to the city of Oxford. I’ve just had a quick troll through Google for why she was named after the city of Oxford, but other than that the breeder lived near there I can’t find anything useful. A lot of rose names are silly (‘Sexy Rexy’) but this one seems to me sillier than many.
She’s getting a bit rare; all named roses being grafts or clones of the original, do tend to wear out eventually. She may be coming to the end of her vitality. But I seem to have got a good one; she’s not in a very salubrious spot, but she’s growing up into the apple tree and finding sufficient sunlight and generally thriving. And I feed her like mad.
Agnes at last. Another rugosa, which means working around her is like putting your hands in a shark’s mouth. † She also has a funny way of growing: six or seven prickly feet straight up and then a cluster of flowers at the tip. I have her tied down over the daphne odora, horizontality being an old gardener’s trick to make a rose send up short vertical shoots with roses on them. She’s also tough and healthy and smells divine.
And Fantin Latour, another rose that regularly gets on the ‘most beautiful’ list. I wouldn’t want to have to choose, myself, but Fantin is superb. She’s also kind of huge. I’ve at least got Souvenir pinned to a wall: Fantin is in the little narrow bed at the edge of the little wall that separates the patio area from the back wall. As I fight my way past her, I tell myself, well, she’s not as big as Souvenir. . . .
* * *
* I try to avoid the dentist, full stop
** Although it’s an idea.
*** No, not all my roses are terrific. Some of them are terrific pains in the backside. But I am perverse and foolish.
† A very small shark. A fairly mellow small shark. Still . . . toothy.
Famous (Not Blue) Raincoat
I am in permanently divided mind about the weather. Walking is much pleasanter when the footpaths aren’t hip deep–and hellhounds try to levitate over bad footing, with mixed results. But watering your garden is a drag. I hate watering. Most boring job on earth.* And annoying. And my garden is a little . . . over-potted. Pots always need watering.
We’ve had this run of glorious bright sunny weather . . . but the ground underfoot is getting on for rock-like and I’m tired of watering. And we finally have some rain supposedly on the way. . . .
Meanwhile Souvenir de la Malmaison is popping with big fat buds. Souvenir de la Malmaison, one of those roses that pretty well invariably gets on ‘the most beautiful of all roses’ lists. Souvenir de la Malmaison, who hates rain. H a t e s rain. Turns to Miss Haversham’s wedding dress in the rain. Those of you who were around Days in the Life this time last year may remember my being out there swathing her in bubble wrap just before the rains came . . . well, almost before the rains came. I lost the ones that were almost-too-nearly-already out. But there was a terrific slightly later flush of flowers–the sort of display where you have to restrain yourself from dragging strangers off the street and saying, Look! Look! Look at that rose!** And I remember saying something last year about how she’s a big bush*** when she gets going and I’m not going to be able to do this swathing-in-bubble-wrap thing forever, or, likely, even next year. Which is to say this year.
It started raining this morning while I was still in the early staggering-around, where-am-I, how-do-I-make-these-appendages-work? phase of getting out of bed. And I thought, no, no, I can’t lose her without a struggle, so I was out there with bubble-wrap and clothes pegs† while the rain fell, wondering if it was already too late. You can hardly breathe on Souvenir without your steamy breath . . . giving her the vapours. Ha. I may have lost the first few half-cracked ones again this year. But . . .
It stopped raining as soon as the last peg was in place†† and I went indoors to get the camera.††† Well, okay, I’ll get the hellhounds pelted early, this is going to be very sticky weather very soon, whether it rains or not. Hellhounds, who would like you to believe that they are beasts of a very fine sensibility, do not like rain either. So I did and it was, but it went on not raining. It is still not raining, barring while I was watering the garden this afternoon, when it came on to leak enough to be moderately unpleasant to be out in, but I knew it would stop the moment I stopped watering, and it did.
Arrrrgh.
* * *
* Note that I like weeding. My bona fides as a gardener are secure.
** Although they’d better not be strolling up my cul de sac staring around with a superior smile on their faces. I hate tourists. Go back down to the main road where you belong and stimulate the economy by buying something! –I nearly bit the head off some poor old bloke who was tottering past on his cane while I was out front weeding pots, who ventured one of those standard gardening remarks at me to the effect of ‘it never ends’ or similar. I looked at his shining friendly face and couldn’t do it. And we ended up having a nice long chat about Gardens We Have Known. Sometimes it’s good to be a wuss.
*** And I am entirely mad for trying to wedge her into a garden this size.
† And I can’t FIND my garden-protection clothes pegs–which are in a nice little bowl or bag or flower pot somewhere, I just don’t know WHERE–so I’ve had to use a fresh lot of clothes pegs and am now running out of clothes pegs. I am attempting to look on the bright side: at least I could find the bubble-wrap.
†† Although gods help me–and Souvenir–and the neighbours–if we get any wind to speak of; there will be bubble-wrap everywhere. Except on Souvenir, keeping the rain off.
††† And this is the little patio clematis you can see dangling in the raincoat photo. For those of us who find plants cute, this is definitely cute. And it’s recommended as being good for trailing.^ You will notice my approach to hanging baskets: I hate hanging baskets like I hate watering, precisely because they are impossible to. Water. So this is my new approach: you put the pot in the hanging basket. Add a little bedraggled hemp netting for verisimilitude or a mulch equivalent. I’m also experimenting with those pointy-ended globe reservoirs you sink into the pot and then fill up the reservoir: I haven’t found either the water gel beads or the water matting or any of the stuff you bury in the basket worth anything at all.
^ I’m rather sweating trailing this year: both my trailing nemesias and my trailing verbenas show no sign of doing anything of the kind. My trailing petunias are my only remaining hope but they haven’t got going yet.
Sunny Sunday
Fortunately I had a pretty good night last night, and when the alarm went off much too early it was agonising but not unendurable. And it’s been another thrillingly beautiful day so I tottered down to the tower completely failing to be in a grim, lowering mood suitable for having had to get out of bed early to ring bells.* Ringers were outside hanging around the font and soaking up sunshine while the early service spilled out.** I arrived with one other, which made us five, and by the time we got upstairs we were six. My initial elation subsided abruptly, however, as I registered that while two of our number were different individuals than on Friday, the line up was the same: five good ringers and me.
Uh-oh.
We rang up the back six and Edward said***: Cambridge Minor. And everyone laughed when I said, I was afraid you were going to say that.
Well, the title gives it away, doesn’t it? I suppose I could have been going for irony. But I wouldn’t be setting you up this extensively to tell you we crashed and burned. I don’t mind telling you when I’ve made a complete pig’s ear of something, but I’m not likely to go on about it. So we rang a touch of Cambridge Minor and there were a few lumpy moments–not all of them mine!–but we did it. And by the end of our service-ring time two more people had turned up, so we finished with a quick touch of Grandsire triples–all eight bells flying–and I’d also been pressed into ringing Grandsire doubles inside, which I haven’t risked on a Sunday morning in a while–so when I tottered back out into the sunlight again I was seriously tottering. And because it was already rather warmer than hellhounds consider ideal I got home and only one grapefruit later went straight out again for our hurtle.
Beautiful Sunday morning in May and a bank holiday weekend, the countryside was pullulating with frelling visitors. I got to give directions a couple of times though, which is always good for a laugh (“er–no–you’ve gone straight past it.” “Er–no–not that way. That way”), including watching their faces change when they hear my American accent. No, actually, I live here, and, trust me, I know every permanent mudhole, every vicious dog, every rusty loop of barbed wire not quite buried in the hedgerow, every falling-down and/or lifting-hellhounds-over stile in a seven-mile radius, and I usually know which kind of critters are in which field. I am Practical Wisdom. Revere me.
And as if that wasn’t enough sunlight, I spent most of the afternoon/evening fighting ground elder at Third House.† With attendant hellhounds. Teaching the hellhounds gardening is proving an uphill struggle, and is one of the reasons the Third House garden remains rather more neglected than it might be. I don’t want to lock hellhounds up while I swan around with a trowel. This is one of those what-dogs-are-for things. Dogs are to hang out with. I don’t expect them to come to the opera with me. I do expect them to learn to stay out of the flowerbeds, to lounge on the grass, and to refrain from torturing snails, which I find upsetting. Although I find taking cat crap‡‡ away from them over and over again pretty upsetting too–they’re so much better at finding it than I am–today I took crap away from Darkness twice and Chaos once in the first fifteen minutes we were there, and the next time I looked up and they were very intent on something it turned out to be the severed leg of some fairly large bird in a rather advanced state of decay . . . ewwwwwwwwww.
But there’s another reason for wanting hellhounds cavorting on the lawn, and that’s the cavorting part: after three hours digging holes I’m dead, and the last thing I want to do is go back to the cottage to lively bright-eyed hellhounds who’ve had a nice sleep and are now wanting their afternoon hurtle. I did eventually manage to persuade them that a rubber ring was more fun than a decomposing appendage–remarkably little tensile strength to decomposing appendages, I’ve noticed this on previous occasions–and to give them what credit they perhaps deserve, if you catch them at it they do ‘drop’ on command, and they don’t have the ooooooh, chocolate reaction to sterilised-manure fertilizer that a lot of dogs have. It’s still not an efficient way to get your gardening done. But I feel we progress. And it does mean hellhounds have been markedly horizontal and undemanding since. And they ate dinner.
* * *
* Early is, of course, relative. Edward and Alex’s two-year-old daughter Louise regularly gets them out of bed at 5.
** Slowly. We have a very nice, very chatty priest, who asks after everyone’s kittens and bunions.
*** I’m probably imagining that he said it savouringly. Like an oenophile getting out the corkscrew. Like a headsman getting out the axe.
† After the obligatory assault on PEGASUS which the closer I get to the end of the slower it goes. Whole scenes are dropping out of nowhere like Green Berets with parachutes. At least May has thirty-one days in it, a whole extra twenty four hours to finish a second draft in. Arrrgh.
†† I hate cats. Frelling sue me. All right, I hate outdoor cats. . . . I hate local outdoor cats. I hate whichever local outdoor cat(s) uses my garden for crap deposit. I especially hate it because aren’t cats supposed to BURY it?? –And yes, I’m sure it’s cat. I’ve cleaned enough litter boxes to recognise it. Snarl.
Beam
Sometimes, despite one’s best efforts to concentrate on the half-emptiness of the glass, things do turn out pretty well.
Sometimes someone’s beloved (ex-) maiden bitch has six fat gorgeous healthy puppies smack on due date and with no trouble AND turns out to be an exemplary mum. And someone else gets a blog entry out of it.
Sometimes southern-England weather is so glorious you involuntarily stop in the middle of a field to stare around in disbelief.*
Sometimes your roses start blooming in May.**
Sometimes. . . .
Yesterday did not start off well. It should have–B-twin had sent the puppy post so I knew I was having an Unscheduled Friday Night Off (since of course puppies should not be expected to wait for Scheduled Saturday Night Guest Blog). But mornings are, at the moment, the worst with the ME***, and I creep out of bed dreading finding out just how floppy I am today. If it isn’t immediately and gruesomely clear I find out by taking hellhounds for their hurtle. Yesterday I was pretty frelling floppy from the first levering-open of the heavy eyelids, with the result we didn’t even get off on our hurtle till late and I’m thinking, okay, so how long can I stay upright and moving? † Arrrgh. Phooey. Despite the beauty of the landscape. And by the end the sun was high enough and it was warm enough that my notoriously heat-sensitive hellhounds decided to go floppy too, and we all fluttered listlessly back to the car like a bunch of paper dolls. Frell.
Meanwhile, however, I’ve been working hard on Noises On (and On and On)†† to take in to Oisin. There are various life-sustaining balancing acts you learn when you have ME†††; you can probably do most things that don’t require sustained effort–so no riding and no quarter ringing‡–and you also don’t do them very fast. But you can do them. I can work on PEGASUS because I can stop and briefly lie down among hellhounds, or just rest my head on my folded arms for a spell. ‡‡ So yesterday I went (slowly) down to the mews for lunch before my music lesson and opened the Noises On folder in Finale and thought . . . uh oh.
A fortnight ago when Oisin played Just a Little Thing for Organ for the first time it was totally and absolutely not right. Some of this is, of course, that I am not JS Bach, nor even Poulenc. Some of it, however, is merely that I haven’t got a clue about the organ (yet, as I keep saying), and crucially cannot hear in my head what something written on the page is going to sound like. There were quite a few shocks to the system when Oisin played Just that first time. So I came home and tore it apart . . . and then didn’t know what to do to put it back together. Last Friday I asked if Oisin would just play organ music for me–it is so astonishingly different live, not to mention being able to point at a stop‡‡‡ and say, What does that do? §–and I can use all the sheer exposure I can get.
And then I came home and started Noises On. And now here it was Friday again.
Oisin liked Noises On.
Beam.
Mind you I’m sure that I’m his student enters into it: most of his students play the piano, and are doing sensible things like trying to pass their grade-level exams. I don’t think he has a lot of composers and/or madwomen, and the thrill of novelty is no bad thing. Also there is a tendency to like something you’re involved with past its merits: I used to get unnaturally fond of books I worked on back in my editing days§§. Also you want to encourage your students, keep them motivated, keep their little bleeding noses and fingers to that grindstone.
But I think he could have got out of liking it if it was total rubbish.
So I went home rather dizzy with elation.§§§
And showed up for ringing practise feeling that I’d probably blown both brains and energy out on my music lesson¤ but it is nonetheless incumbent upon me to show up. There were only six of us–but that was five good ringers and me. And Edward saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. . . . and called for Cambridge. Which is a ‘surprise’ method. Yeeeeeep. Which means I was treble bobbing: which is pretty much what it sounds like. You’re ringing the treble, and you bob--in this case you take two steps forward and one step back till you get all the way to the back (so on six bells this is sixth place), and then you hang around there for a while and then come back to the front again, again two steps forward and one step back: it means you need hellishly good bell control since you’re constantly changing direction and while you don’t have any ‘work’ to remember just the counting your places: (1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 6 . . . ) is terrifying enough. You miss a place and you’re dead. I think I blogged about treble bobbing for the first time in months with Wild Robert a few Wednesdays ago, and finding out I could. Since I feel Wild Robert’s practise is a lot less intimidating than my own home practise this was a Very Good Thing to have discovered recently. So last night was a great evening. Even if I did lose my place once or twice. Ahem. I wasn’t the only one. And I rang a touch of Stedman.
It’s all the puppies really. Puppies are very inspiring.¤¤
* * *
* While hellhounds go ping! Kerrroing! off the ends of their leads.
** We are seriously overdue for a garden post here at Days in the Life. We may have to have several in a row.
*** Everything varies with ME. I daresay that’s one of the doctors’ excuses for refusing to believe it existed for so long.^
^ And I’ve said before that I’m one of those who doubts it’s one exact thing; I think it’s likelier to be something like a syndrome.
† Mornings are also a ratbag because I used to ride in the morning and it’s like, lift a saddle up to a horse’s back? And then climb on said horse? Don’t make me laugh. Although I’m not sure I mean laugh. Things have been grisly long enough that at the moment I can’t imagine how I ever did manage to ride, especially in the morning.
†† This joke is dependent on being acquainted with the very-famous-over-here killingly funny play Noises Off, but I’m not sure if it’s an international phenomenon? If you ever have a chance to see it, go.
††† When you have a mild case of it, as I do. People with severe ME don’t get out of bed.
‡ Except by accident. I treasure the handbell quarter the other week because it happened. If Niall had tried to get me to promise in advance to ring one, I’d've said no.
‡‡ Although this tends to produce hellhound nose in the face or ear. This is rather more bearable when the hellhound is not carrying a sticky, disintegrating toy.
‡‡‡ Called something wonderful like diapason or bombarde
§ And then be hopelessly confused by the answer. It’s a bit like asking Edward or Wild Robert about the construction of change ringing methods.
§§ It went one way or another: I either thought it was better than it was or I thought the author should be drawn and quartered, shot, hanged, and made to sell vacuum cleaners door to door for the rest of his/her life.
§§§ And concentration and . . . nerves. In the first place an organ is such a public beast. I walk past the church a lot, and I can hear if someone is playing the organ.^ I have performance anxiety even when it’s not me who’s performing–even if nobody but Oisin knows that I wrote the thing he’s playing.^^ But trying to focus that intensely on what the music sounds like, so I have some idea what to do when I get it home again–the piano is only a little help and sodding Finale is almost no help at all–by the end of the hour, ease and relaxation not assisted by Oisin wanting suggestions for fripperies like dynamics--I felt not just light-headed but a little sick.
^ Sometimes I stop to listen.
^^ And there were about a dozen people having a meeting in the opposite corner of the church! As well as people like flower ladies wandering in and out! Arrrrgh!
¤ I came home and started yanking Just a Little around again.
¤¤ Real life has been trying to catch up again today however. The wedding Niall and Vicky and I agreed to ring for Colin’s short-staffed tower today ran an hour late, and hellhounds are on hunger strike again. Sigh.