Planting Pansies in the Dark . . .
. . . and other notable vegetative mishaps, most particularly The Return of the Indoor Jungle. 
I am already TIRED of bringing things in and taking things out the next morning AND IT’S STILL ONLY OCTOBER. The clocks haven’t even gone back yet.* Granted I slowly develop a system**: the stuff that’s going to have to come in lives near the door—either door, I’m not fussy, except for the icy wind tunnel caused by having both front and kitchen doors open at once—which means that the stuff from the very-well-back of the garden has to find, or have found for it, somewhere near one of the doors to put its feet or anyway its pot down. Fortunately the hellhounds don’t use their courtyard much any more. In the morning they can’t be bothered: they’re busy bringing the Beady Eyed Take Us for a Hurtle Stare into play.*** Last thing at night . . . it’s pretty much an obstacle course out there, made more exciting by me standing in the kitchen door (because I usually haven’t remembered to put shoes on) and hissing† (it being very late and sound carries†† and Phineas will leave his bathroom window open, even in cold weather †††) No—no—you don’t want to pee there—noooo—not on the pansies/snapdragons/salvia‡/rudbeckia/begonia/dahlia/pelargonium/ monarda/chocolatecosmos/gallardia/osteospermum/impatiens/echinacea/ pink/clematis/funnythingIdon’tknowthenameofbutIknowit’stender/rose! And in fact hellhounds seem to have decided that going outdoors merely long enough to make me say ‘no don’t pee there’ is a mysterious but salient part of the last-thing-before-bed ritual that leads to their bedtime snack which, mysteriously, they seem to like.‡‡
On frosty nights, of course, you could play six a side football out there because the plants are all indoors. Like tonight. Tonight is the third night this week I’ve played host to the indoor jungle. All that schlepping drastically cuts into my pansy-planting time too.‡‡‡ Not to mention PEG II writing. And singing. Ahem.
* * *
* And then I’ll really be planting pansies in the dark.
** Chiefly involving HOW MANY PLANTS CAN I GET ON THAT WINDOWSILL FOR THE WINTER?^ OH COME ON, I’M SURE I CAN GET AT LEAST ONE MORE ON. MAYBE TWO. AND IF YOU FALL OFF YOU LITTLE RATBAG(S),^^ I’LL LEAVE YOU OUT FOR MR FROST.
^ Some of which then settle down and get on with it so successfully that come spring they’re too big to move.
^^ Happy begonias and trailing fuchsias in particular can boil over the edges of their pots and down to a remarkable, not to say oversetting, degree, and you don’t know in advance which pots to put the osmium bricks in the bottoms of, because the relative happiness of pot plants is a riddle and a conundrum the finest minds cannot penetrate. And osmium is expensive, you know. You don’t use osmium bricks . . . lightly.+
+ Hee hee hee.
*** Chaos will quite often go stand by the kitchen door in the morning and look at me meaningfully. Okay, I say, and open the door. He goes out, looks around, does a 360° turn and comes straight back in again, now glaring at me and clearly affronted. —I have no idea. He is a fruit loop. Fruit loops frequently behave in a fruitily loopish manner.
† Speaking of which, Phineas is already letting the hellkitten out. He’s still hardly big enough to make a hellhound hors d’oeuvre, not that food is ever high on the hellhound agenda . . . but they love things that run, and it’s not going to matter that I never ever ever ever ever ever let them chase him, after they’ve seen him streak across the landscape once or twice they’re going to be coming out of the cottage spring-loaded, like the English archers at Agincourt. I may start taking them back and forth to the car blindfolded.
†† It sure does. All summer long I get a front row/back bedroom seat/pillow over head^ to the Troll and Nightingale’s weekend live tribute bands. You know, there are a lot of bands that were sufficiently ghastly in the original that the concept of tribute conjures up a rather Necronomicon-ish vision, with fewer stringed instruments and a lot more blood . . . especially very late at night with a pillow over your head.
^ And no cover charge! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
††† Ie into my garden. Yet another clear piece of evidence that the builder responsible for the conversion was planning to put his hated mother-in-law in my cottage.
‡ Which is tender and it has no business being tender. Whoever heard of a tender salvia? All right, all right, don’t everybody yell at me at once. But you can’t kill common purple sage with fire, drought, heavy shade, no root room due to all the plumbing in Hampshire, criminal neglect or having large heavy things dropped on it repeatedly. Or hard frost. Ask me how I know this. Eventually I dug it up and took it to Third House where it went YOWZAH and is now taking over the universe. Although my Greater Thigh of Nymph^ is saying, not my universe, honeybun.
I thought my pretty blue sage was merely a particularly good blue. Not that it was a particularly good blue because it was going to turn out to be some frelling tender fainting heroine. The thing’s HUGE. I wouldn’t have potted it on so generously IF I’D REALISED IT WAS GOING TO SPEND THE WINTER IN THE SITTING ROOM. Actually, it isn’t, but I’m not sure it’ll fit in Wolfgang to go up to the summer/greenhouse at Third House either. Aaaaugh.
And my frelling hardy fuchsias are frelling tender too. I don’t know what it is about me and fuchsias. I knew I was going to have to bring the long frilly trailing petticoat ones indoors, and have dug them up and put them in pots, and most of them are yielding with good grace to this discourtesy but one of them isn’t, but the hardy ones in the garden are busy going all wilty and sad (like the salvia). You’re hardy. I still have the catalogue that says you’re hardy^^. Meanwhile: starspawn in a small Hampshire garden. 
Siiiiiiigh. I can’t go on doing this all winter.
^ Or possibly Thigh of Greater Nymph. No, really. But you only get it in the original French. When the prudish English translate, it comes out as Maiden’s Blush. You’ve figured out by now I’m talking about a rose, right? I’ve probably made this joke before too because I like it. http://www.classicroses.co.uk/products/roses/maidens-blush-great/
^^ I’ve been through this before. Oh, it’s just the stuff above ground, I’ve said. It’ll come back next year, like the dicentras. No. Wrong.
‡‡ Possibly because it’s the Third-Mortgage Kibble. The reason it costs so much is that it’s laced with heroin, to make sure dogs really like it and come back for more. I’m not sure I care if they eat it.
‡‡‡ Have I mentioned my 13 million pansies? I have? I was planting out wodges of the several trays of unknowns today. The damp muddy piece of paper may have told me that I was the glad recipient of lots and lots and lots of Ratbag Rosencavaliers, Bilateral Bandoliers and Toxic Pterodactyls, but the trays themselves still have no labels on them. It seems rather suitable to be planting unknown pansies in the dark.
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