Sunday morning
(This had been going to go up yesterday. And then we went hurtling and the scenery won. So I changed a few verb tenses and . . . )
I had about four hours’ sleep Saturday night. I turned the light out at a perfectly respectable hour*, or let’s say a retiring hour I find appropriate to an alarm clock going off at 8 a.m. later that morning. And then I didn’t sleep. After most of an hour of lying in the dark with my eyes burning with openness, I turned the light back on again.
So Sunday did not contain any of my brighter or more scintillating exploits. I got through bell ringing without being murdered by my colleagues, so that was good. And then I tottered down the street to the florist. I have a serious cut-flower habit, and I go in every Sunday morning after ringing and stoke the sucker.** And the florist, who thinks I’m fun to watch, often gives me a bunch of this or that which is on its last legs and past being sold. Then I take my swag home(s)*** and play.
Yesterday she gave me a handful of stocks which, when I took them home and gingerly separated them, instantly dropped half their flowers. However, waste not want not.
You can see the rest of them here. 
The usual system is to buy a few cheap things, like carnations, and one or two (or three) individual roses.****
At this point however it was still comparatively early. Hellhounds had greeted me on my return from ringing† and then retired again to their crate to finish their necessary fourteen hours’ nighttime shut-eye. †† I started doing some of the standard household chores–the first of the twice daily brush-ups of the frelling kitchen floor, for example, followed by the daily mop. And there seem to be a few dishes languishing in the sink (how did they get there?). And then I was seized by the notion of cleaning the kitchen windowsill.
This happens, in fact, a little oftener than you might think. I have to stare at it while I do the washing up, and plants tend to be messy, er, beasts. It’s a nice deep windowsill suitable for . . . jamming more stuff onto than will fit on your counters when you move it for cleaning purposes. I contrived to strip the lot and gave the sill and the window a good rubdown †††. But before I began putting stuff back, I found myself staring, instead, at this.
I have no idea what this was when it first emerged blinking into the light of day from the deranged craftsperson’s chisel. I put gravel in the bottom of it and a plant pot on the gravel. (Real plant. Plastic pot. Sorry.) But how did they expect you to clean it? ‡ 
I use a toothbrush and washing-up soap, but anything you keep plants in gets permanently stained and grotty, and if it was supposed to hold olives‡‡, I’m very sorry. It is at least much loved and admired, in a somewhat baffled and I-have-to-clean-you snarly kind of way.‡‡‡
And here is the shiny clean reloaded windowsill. I love geraniums. 
That one on the left came in with the indoor jungle the first time a fortnight or something ago and didn’t go back out again–this is the one I rescued from a long winter of cardboard-box-hood a few weeks before that, dug it up from under Louis XIV’s skirts §–and I figure, a few less things to carry in and out is good. §§ And it’s going, hey! I’m indoors! I’m warm! GREAT! §§§ –and eagerly putting out flower buds. The one on the right–in the olive/caviar pedestal–has been newly adopted as a house plant, and we’ll see how she does. She’s one of the Butes–I can’t remember which one and (ahem) her label has Somehow Got Lost–but the Bute question is much confused by the fact that I keep buying geraniums that are supposed to be Lord Bute http://www.thompson-morgan.com/plants1/product/p83391/1/ and never are. I have a very nice assortment of dark maroon Lord Bute-ish geraniums–oh, all right, pelargoniums. Anyway. This year I have added the Marquis and the Marchionness of Bute to the fray, and this one may be one of them.
The dark green thing between the two geraniums is a hibiscus I am probably unintelligently allowing to set seed because I’m curious to see what hibiscus seed looks like, the flowers are so wild and flamboyant. And you see the cyclamen going like gangbusters back there.
Life is endlessly thrilling with pot plants.
And I just cleaned that frelling sink. 
Have you ever noticed that you’re often seized by an urgency to clean when you’ve just done something (like scrub the sink or sweep the floor) that you will promptly undo by yielding to the frenzy?
* * *
* HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, stop, I’m killing me
** I know. Very ungreen.
*** I seem to have fallen into the habit of festooning the mews too.
**** At the foot of the vase you will see a little cluster of pink. That’s my birthday posy, still hanging on. Gallant thing. I admit it’s looking a little tired but I’m not going to throw it out till it positively crumbles out of its green block of florist’s oasis. I’m a sort of anti-romantic romantic.
† They have to. It’s in their contract.
†† Well, semi-lidded eye anyway. And to be closely followed by the necessary eight hours of daytime semi-lidded eye, briefly interrupted at intervals for hurtling.
††† The spiders were not pleased
‡ It clearly comes from the same stable as my attack-dolphin lamp. You can’t clean that either. I can’t remember if I’ve told you, the old house used to belong to the widow of an admiral or a general or something who fancied herself as gentry. There was one of her, and she had six indoor servants–live in, I mean, not counting the maids and gardeners and whatnot that came in by day. She’s the one put the wings on, with the crenelations, and the fake escutcheon over the door. Six live-in servants for one conceited old biddy is, of course, obscene, but you look at the kind of dust-catcher nonsense that came out of that era–note that my attack dolphins did not start life wired for electricity–and you wonder, did they make this stuff because they knew servants existed to deal with it, or did they make this stuff to give servants something to do?
‡‡ or beluga caviar
‡‡‡ But it had had a hard life before it came to me: that’s cement, or something like it, and yes, those cracks go all the way through the original base. 
§ It’s a rose
§§ I’ll show you some of the other windowsills later, possibly again. I know I’ve shown you at least the one on the opposite side of the kitchen before, with The Most Amazing Geranium of All Time on it.
§§§ Although: certifiable geranium blooming outdoors in December. Yes, that filthy background is my house wall, and that’s mould.
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