And a Fabulous Friday
I am eating sweetcorn/corn on the cob the way corn was meant to be straight out of Peter’s vegetable patch and into the steamer, and having rung a Perfect Touch of Stedman doubles tonight at practise.* It doesn’t get much better. And while it’s a difficult philosophical point, I think I will accept that successful touches of Stedman doubles are, for me, an acceptable trade-off for the absence of Maine wild-blueberry pie, which sweetcorn always makes me think wistfully of.**
So Peter and I went on our Unexpected Free Friday Afternoon*** expedition to the big garden centre today as planned.† I am so not safe in a garden centre. †† This is mostly the wrong time of year for planting anything, except for sudden panicky fillings-in where things have inconveniently died—it’s too late for the summer stuff and too early for the autumn. But a lot of perennials—the tougher ones anyway—you can pretty much plant whenever you get around to it. ††† Take . . . roses, for example. No! No! Get me away from the roses! I’ve just ordered . . . mmmph‡ . . . roses! I don’t need any more roses! I need fewer roses than I’m about to already have!‡‡
In some ways nurseries and garden centres are worse than bookstores, because plants are alive. Books may whisper, Buy me! Buy me! as you walk past‡‡‡ but I find the guilt is less if you resist.§ They’re indoors, they’re warm, they’re dry, they don’t need to be fed, watered, or hurtled. Especially at an off time of year in gardening terms, there are always plants that through no fault of their own haven’t sold. Some of them can just hunker down and wait, but some of them are getting pot-bound and unhappy. You’re never supposed to buy a pot-bound, unhappy plant, like you’re never supposed to buy the puppy/kitten/budgie/crocodile sitting sadly in the corner, because even if there was nothing wrong with them to begin with there’s a point of bad care past which they won’t recover. I popped several things out of their pots to see how bad the news was—uggh—steeled myself, and put them down again. I only bought one plant!§§ One! §§§ A little pale-yellow rhododendron that I’ve grown before, but it seems to have got left behind at the old house and I was glad to see it again. I admit it was sitting sadly in a corner but I’ll give it a nice new bigger pot and some friendly ericaceous compost and trim off the dead bits and . . .
And speaking of pots. My restraint may have more to do with how big Wolfgang is than any true self-control: after all I had Peter with me and the man was expecting some floor space for his purchases. The ridiculous arrogance of some people’s husbands. Really.¤ By the time I’d got to the reject rhodo I’d already kind of filled up my cart with pots. Empty ones I mean. I have a jones for plant pots that’s very nearly as serious as for books, roses, or chocolate.¤¤ Nearly. And of course I have a tiny garden with all the plumbing in Hampshire running under it, and another slightly less tiny garden where there is a growing rank of camellias, necessarily in pots in this part of Hampshire, against the hedge.
But my excuse for the garden centre run—Peter wanted some of those hole-filler plants—is that I wanted to load up on soil improver and rotted farmyard crap for all those newly-cleared flowerbeds at Third House that are about to have roses in them. I picked up six monster bags of two different kinds of caviar and foie gras for plants, and I could barely get the cart to move: it only had a single pair of wheels, which meant I had to lever the front end off the ground before it would roll. I’m tallish, but there’s not a lot of me in a circumferential direction, and the cart weighed a good deal more than I do. I teetered out into the car park with my bell ringing muscles struggling against terminal gravity, and managed to get the cart to Wolfgang where Peter was peacefully loading plants into the back seat, before gravity won.
At this point the nice gentleman the next car over came rushing up and said, Would you like a hand with those?
I—briefly—wondered how he thought I’d got the wretched things into the cart in the first place, but one of the advantages of getting old is that you can slack off on the having-to-prove-stuff. That would be terrific, I said, and then lounged against Wolfgang’s flank (watching his axle and rear bumper sag lower and lower) and let the nice man get on with it. I had assumed that we were going to heave them in together, two hands per end—which is what Peter and I did when we got them to Third House—but he went all hairy-fisted he-man and did it all by himself. Maybe he rings bells. If I ever see him in a pub I’ll buy him a pint.
And hellhounds ate all of their dinner. All this and a perfect touch of Stedman.
* * *
* And in spite of someone else going wrong. The Kent, I admit, was less divine, but at least it happened.
** Tricky philosophical questions be damned, I am very lucky to have put myself out of reach of wild-blueberry pie before the menopause wars. There are enough things I am not out of reach of. Chocolate. Chocolate. Lemon curd. Chocolate. Kendal Mint Cake, which Americans are mostly spared. Lardy cake, which Americans are also mostly spared.^ Chocolate. I could go on. I could go on a very long time.
^ I believe I have said in these virtual pages before that I would kill for the ability to eat a piece of lardy cake without gaining five pounds overnight.
*** Oisin is on holiday for two more Fridays. Of course I should be getting on with any number of musical prodigies to cause consternation and dismay on his return^ but what I am doing is transposing Beethoven’s arrangement of The Miller of Dee down about a fifth, because what’s the point of having all those notes below middle C if you never get to sing them?^^ And while I’m at it I’m messing around with the accompaniment because I’m like that.
And I went past the church while the wedding that cancelled its bells at the last minute was going on and there were not one but two shiny Daimler-type vehicles festooned in white ribbons sitting out front. No wonder they couldn’t afford bells.
^ Okay, the broom and dustpan are a nice percussive touch, but tell me again what you want the crocodile for?
^^ I’ve had exactly two voice lessons and I’m already rebelling.
† An actual carried out plan in my life. Golly. I’ll be balancing my chequebook next.^
^ No.
†† They’re just like bookstores. Aaaaaugh.
††† . . . humming a tune . . .
‡ Several. Well, quite a few. Sort of the rose-buying equivalent of when I usually get to bed. Mmmph.
‡‡ Now there’s grammar for you.
‡‡‡ And in my experience they usually do.
§ And yes, I also automatically buy copies of favourite books found in charity shops and car boot sales to make sure they go to a good home. There’s always someone to give a favourite book to.
§§ And a tray of pansies. Trays of pansies don’t count.
§§§ All those roses are kind of on my mind. I also have kind of a lot of bulbs coming. And a few other little green growing things. Mere bagatelles really. But you wouldn’t believe how much SPACE there is at Third House since I turned Atlas loose on clearing all the rubbish out of the flowerbeds!
¤ Peter is a star. I still haven’t found my PIN number and I’m running out of cash. Peter paid for my stuff on his card.
¤¤ I have a new measurement for pots however. If it’s standing one-brick’s-height^ up from the ground, is it too tall for the hellhounds to pee on the plant in it?
^ I mostly can’t be frelled with plant pot feet. Bricks are so much less, ahem, fusspot.
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