Life in a Small Town Is More Exciting than You Think
Tuesday was not a great day in my life: I had to go to the dentist rather than have my voice lesson. How gross is that? And I’m fretting about Peter, and it’s HOT, and it won’t frelling rain:* and my favourite English tree is the beech, and they have shallow roots.**
So I got back to the cottage from the dentist with my head beginning to go bang bang bang bang*** and . . . there was a rosebush sitting on my front stair.† Yes, it’s true, I have several rosebushes out front in various unsuitable planters††, but I don’t usually have a great magnificent pink thing in full flower sitting in the space I need to stand on to get my front door open. I approached it cautiously. Dental anaesthesia has not yet made me hallucinate large pink rosebushes††† but there’s always a first time.
There was a card.‡ It was from Southdowner and B_Twin. I looked at the card. I looked at the rosebush. I looked at the card again. I looked at the rosebush again.‡‡ They can’t have brought her here. Southdowner was supposed to be taking B_Twin to the airport on Tuesday. Heathrow is well over an hour from here and Southdowner lives in the midlands. They must have had her delivered . . . even if it does look like some ordinary person or persons just heaved her up the stair and plonked her on my porch.
Atlas was at the cottage on Tuesday so I went round to the garden‡‡‡ to ask him. Two women in a white van, he said without missing a beat.
Oh.
I’m really quite alarmed at this manifestation of rampant derangement among my mods but . . . I’m a realist.§ It’s fine. I got a rosebush out of it. A rosebush, furthermore, with hot pink flowers the size of grapefruit.
And what’s more I’ve already planted her. I know you don’t believe me. But it’s true.
What happened is that I’ve had a big empty planter in the hellhounds’ courtyard for . . . uh . . . quite a while. I was using it (oh the shame) as the legs of a seedling tray and when I finally got everything on the tray PLANTED like . . . three days ago . . . I figured I’d better fill it up and put something in it fast before it becomes a seedling tray next year too.§§ So I tipped all my remaining compost into it§§§ and promised poor Summer Song, who was an impulse buy months ago, and was still sitting in her plastic David Austin pot#, that she could go in it, as soon as I bought more compost. But rosebushes have minds of their own, and she’s been trying to turn into a climber while she waited for permanent accommodation, and the Pink Grapefruit Rose is already a nice low sprawly shrub. So I put Pink Grapefruit into the ex-seedling-tray-table, and freed another planter that has been the top storey of my greenhouse table, filled it up with my brand-new compost## and put Summer Song in it and to one side of the courtyard###, where a frame for her to climb up won’t block my view of Mme Isaac Periere.
. . . Frell. The photos of Summer Song in her new home haven’t worked. But here is one of her flowers: 
http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=4532
And, wherever WordPress decides to put her, here is Pink Grapefruit, aka Lady of Megginch: 
http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=4794 ~
I am, of course, totally predictable, and I don’t suppose Southdowner and B_Twin, having decided on their errand of insanity, had a lot of trouble saying: that one. She’s pink. But Lady of Megginch was on my short list last autumn and I only barely didn’t quite buy her . . . not only is she piiiiiink, I love the name. It sounds vaguely Cthulhuian.
* * *
* And I’m Forgetting Everything I Ever Knew About Bell Ringing. See last Friday: went wrong in Grandsire Doubles, which is a bit like Zara Phillips forgetting how to sit the trot.^ And I was so shattered Monday night I did not go ringing at Colin’s tower although I’d planned to.
[BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH FRELLING WORDPRESS BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH GET DOWN THERE WITH YOUR FOOTNOTE YOU ^ BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH FRELL FRELL FRELL ETC]
^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zara_Phillips
** I haven’t quite tucked a hose among the roots of the copper beech that hangs over Third House’s garden from the churchyard, but I’m thinking about it.
*** I may have stopped at the local farmers’ warehouse store on the way home to buy more large heavy bags of compost. Well, I needed them.
† Little did I know how much more compost I needed.
†† I kind of specialise in unsuitable planters. I’ve just been tweeting that FOR PITY’S SAKE THE AUTUMN PLANT CATALOGUES ARE STREAMING IN . . . I am so not in the mood to be thinking about next spring’s tulips.^ Not least because I . . . er . . . have perhaps not quite got all this summer’s plants, you know, planted.^^ But (as I also tweeted) it’s surprising how well most things will do in too-small pots if you manage to keep ’em well fed. I haven’t got ROOM to put everything that ought to be in REALLY BIG pots. Roses, for example.
^ Which, furthermore, I will get planted in . . . February. Maybe March.
^^ At least I’m consistent. Consistency+ is not only the hobgoblin of little minds, it’s the last resort of the hopelessly disorganised.
+ Foolishness optional.
††† I might hate it less if it did. I totally grant that being poisoned by forty-six gallons of anaesthesia is to be preferred to the alternative. I’d’ve died young if I’d been born before anaesthesia was invented. But I still feel like I’ve been poisoned for days afterward. They keep threatening to sedate me again and I keep saying, the last time you sedated me, speaking of toxic hangovers, I fell down and broke my hand the next day. No.
‡ Something rude about dogs, which I will not quote because this is an all-ages blog. Mostly.
‡‡ I wondered if I needed a stepladder to get to my front door. After the large bags of compost I wasn’t sure I was up to carrying the rosebush anywhere.
‡‡‡ Where he was putting another gate into the hellhounds’ picket fence. My feet get larger and trailing-er and catch-between-the-pickets-ier every time I step over it. Especially when I’m carrying, oh, say a large heavy rosebush.
§ HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
§§ We will not discuss whether or not it may have been a seedling tray last year.
§§§ See? I did need more compost.
# But I’ve been feeding her and she’s been doing . . . surprisingly well. As above. ^
^ Yes, it occurred to me that she might have been turning into a climber as a result of being in a majorly too-small pot. But in fact when I tipped her out she hadn’t filled up the pot she was in. She just Wants to Be a Climber.
## I now need even more compost. But I’m not planning on waiting till I have to go to the dentist again to get it.
###FRANTIC RESHUFFLING OF THE TOO MANY POTS AND PLANTERS ALREADY OCCUPYING THAT SPACE.
~ If anyone is paying attention, you will notice that both of them are described as arriving at ‘4 x 3′’. Yes. And Fantin Latour is supposed to stop at 6 x 5′. And Souvenir de la Malmaison is supposed to stop at 12′. In pots I have some hope of persuasion. . . .
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