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Redux, various
I WANT MY WOLFGANG. WAAAAAAH.
The good news is that Peter got out of Scotland about thirty seconds before they closed the border.* He came home this afternoon and instantly began reorganising my life.** This included ringing up the garage which, to my amazement, seems to think we can have Wolfgang back tomorrow morning. Fourteen year old cars and MOT tests are not usually a happy merger and I’ve been bracing myself for the conversation about the new car again.*** Even if we manage to limbo under the government bar however and get our sticker I imagine there will be a little list.†
Meanwhile today would be the day that I started to get out of bed and the ME sighed and stretched luxuriously and said, are you sure that’s what you want to do? Oh. Frell. You again. Well, yes, I do want to get up. I have hellhounds to hurtle and a piano lesson this afternoon and bell tower practise this evening.†† And no car.
I know we did this trooping up and down main street thing during the snow, but I’m not in the mood when I’m trying to hold it together with the ME riding me like a bulldogger with spurs. I am also reminded of how forcefully I object to walking anywhere without the hellhounds in attendance—two hours a day of hurtling is enough of the shanks’ mare option. Hey! It’s ten minutes to walk to Oisin’s from the cottage and back . . . having been back and forth to the mews to pick up my music and have a bit of a go at the piano.
Anyone who is paying the wrong kind of attention will have ascertained by now that I’m not posting the lullaby to PEGASUS this Friday either. I finally managed to get the freller printed off so that Oisin could actually see what he was playing . . . and he made several Small But Excellent suggestions††† that I now want to incorporate and I still have to relearn how to make dynamic markings on dranglefabbing Finale and then I will finally post it here. No, really. It exists.‡ It even sounds reasonably lullaby-ish. In fact I like it well enough that I’m going to ask Peter if he wants to write another verse so I can compose some variations.
I felt fairly dire while I was with Oisin although as I said to him I was expecting to feel suddenly a great deal better as soon as I left and any danger of my having to sing was past till next week. Sigh. I sometimes think I got into composing as a way not to have to perform.‡‡
I had already had an email exchange with Niall about tomorrow‡‡‡ and had warned him that I was feeling like something that ought to be pickled in formaldehyde in a jar on a mad scientist’s shelf but that I’d probably just about make it to tower practise, since we’re usually short handed these days and I ought to be able to manage rounds and call changes for our beginners. And then we had a funny band—three beginners and six hot bananas.§ And me. I was helping hold up one of the walls in a semi-comatose state while one of the beginners wrestled with ringing rounds on four, five and six §§ bells and then Niall made one of his passes round the room as a good ringing master will do and when he got to me he said, Are you ready to ring Cambridge?
Am I frelling what? No I am frelling not frelling ready to frelling ring frelling Cambridge. Am I clear?
Okay, said Niall. You can have a few minutes to look at the line.
Ah, adrenaline. What would I do without it. You know that’s one of the working definitions of ME? Exhausted adrenals? Yes. Well. At this point—Niall having passed on to fresh victims—I could feel my eyeballs throbbing to my suddenly heightened blood pressure. So I got out my diagram book and began staring at Cambridge while it went all glmxxxxxx on the page. Anthea came over to be supportive—two of our hot bananas tonight were Colin and his wife Anthea, who is one of my favourite people. You look at her face and you know It’s Going to Be All Right. Possibly Even When It Includes Ringing Cambridge. She is also a completely brilliant minder, which is a significant gift. Just because you can ring something doesn’t mean you can boost somebody else through it—especially boost them in a way that they learn something rather than merely collapsing into blindly doing what they’re told, which is probably more demoralising than breaking down. Anthea got me through my first couple of goes at Kent and it’s a lot of thanks to her that it began making sense to me as soon as it did.
I really did think that Cambridge was a bridge too far however. You don’t ring your first surprise method after a couple of sudden unexpected ten-minute cramming sessions because your ringing master(s) is/are wholly effing mad and your adrenals aren’t quite exhausted. Roger on the five was complaining that he didn’t feel like ringing Cambridge tonight and I said, don’t worry, this won’t last long, and Colin on the three, next to me on the two said, oh, yes it will.
And it did. We got through an entire plain course of Cambridge. I do wish to emphasize that this is absolutely due to Anthea’s crack minding . . . but I’ve been here before, learning something with Anthea at my elbow. We got through it. And I knew what I was trying to do even when I wasn’t seeing the bells to do it with.
I can do this. I am going to learn Cambridge.
Maybe I’ll even sing for Oisin next Friday.§§
* * *
*Joke. But apparently it’s pretty vicious up there. Our lot still have electricity and can feel their way through the snowdrifts, but a lot of people don’t and can’t. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/scotland/7325843/Wintry-weather-sweeps-Scotland.html
And then of course there’s New York. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=119564§ionid=3510203
And I was complaining earlier about being pummelled by a little hail. I’m such a wuss. But look what came in the post for me today from Hannah (in NYC):
I’m trying. Clearly my solar capacity isn’t quite up to 3500 miles.
(Yes. That’s what you think it is, underneath, on the table. I’ll give you a better view one of these days. I know, you can hardly wait.)
The thing that amuses me even more about this item however is the tag: 
Post consumer material???
** It’s shocking how much disorganization can creep up on you in a mere day and a half.
*** No. But I admit if we have two winters in a row like this one, this time next year I will be thinking hard about a new four-wheel drive car. With waterproof locks.
† Frushipergug rods and bistamudze belt need replacing. Gradundabble connections should be tightened. The whimmerwhammer needs realigning. And while you’re at it you need a new engine, four new tyres, and a CD player.
†† And a novel to write.
††† I asked him if he wanted credit and he said no, no, no, just keep writing the stuff.
‡ So do the little flute piece I promised Jodi and the truly tiny violin piece I promised violinknitter. I’m just . . . a horrible coward. And I keep thinking I want to twiddle them a little more. . . .
‡‡ I wonder if it would work with Blondel. . . . I am such a hopeless case. I’m afraid to sing for Oisin, and I’m afraid to take one of my songs to Blondel. What do I think is going to happen? The end of the world?
‡‡‡ The other reason the ME was kind enough to come back today, aside from not singing for Oisin, is being able to say no I am not going handbell ringing Saturday morning. Although . . . sigh. I would like to ring with Titus and Rupert.
§ So to speak.
§§ One of the reasons ringing seems, when you’re first learning, to be coming at you from all directions is that the eenie weenie difference in timing and rhythm between, say, four and six bells, which when you’re learning to handle you have no sense of, makes a drastic practical difference in keeping your place.
§§§ Or take one of my songs in to Blondel. Maybe I could get him to sing the lullaby.
Cambridge
I rang Cambridge last night.* My first surprise method, that holy of holies and scary of scaries.
Well. A little bit of Cambridge. But even that is a substantial miracle, like . . . managing to sing for Oisin tomorrow afternoon, supposing I do. It was also an excellent example of Wild Robert at his maddest. I think I wasn’t blogging yet when he pitched me into Stedman after I’d been ringing about a year and a half and could just about struggle through bob doubles on a good day. Stedman was like yanking the toddler off her tricycle and entering her in the Tour de France. Gah. However, the grind mechanism was engaged and I did, in fact, learn Stedman. Grind, grind, grind. Eventually.
Ditherington has been going through a bad patch for practise night ringers and Wild Robert clearly had a rush of blood to the head when there were more ringers than bells last night . . . and the fact that only three of them could ring Cambridge—himself, Niall, and Ditherington’s fearless tower captain Marilyn—he waved airily aside, and told Michelle and me to learn the line. Now. Right then. This moment. When we weren’t ringing little stuff for the learners, that is. GAH. Do you know how long learning a complex line takes?** Gerald, it must be said, should have been learning the line, but he is one of these people—all occupations have them***—who fancies himself a good deal more competent than he is, and I only mention it because his unique contribution makes our eventual semi-success that much more heroic. We got through about half of it, and since the standard means of learning surprise† is by individual lead, of which Cambridge minor has five, we obviously all get medals.
The other interesting†† thing that happened last night is that I had to call some bob doubles. You hardliners who actually read these posts when they’re about bell ringing may recall that Wild Robert informed me, like a clap on the ear, about a fortnight ago that I was to call a touch of Grandsire. I did this successfully, to everyone’s amazement††† . . . but I could do it because for this particular touch you the conductor, by the calls you make, are calling yourself through a very easy sub-pattern within the entire method. The other ringers are performing the sweaty bits. Last night Wild Robert, grinning maleficently as he snatched my diagram book out of my hands, open, as it was, to Cambridge, stated that for my next trick I would call a touch of bob doubles. Oh, I said warily. I’ve been reading up, you know‡, and I ventured a remark about having perhaps some clue about the bob doubles equivalent of that Grandsire touch the other week. No, no, said Wild Robert, grinning even more maleficently, Denis gets to ring that bell. You have to call it from an affected bell . . . in other words I would be ringing all the sweaty bits and trying to remember to shout BOB at the correct intervals. And learn Cambridge in my spare time.
I admit that my calling was not quite the clean victorious sweep that it was for the easier Grandsire touch. But we got through and I shouted BOB and . . . and I can learn this. I really can. I understood what I was supposed to be doing—I understood the concept. How did this happen? It’s a bit like realising a few months ago that I was, in fact, going to make it to ringing surprise—how did that happen? And while I have thought that I ought to learn to call something, I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect with any enthusiasm. So the second thing about the experience is that . . . calling is actually kind of cool. So, yeah, okay, I’d like to learn to call a few touches. . . .‡‡
I blasted out of bed this morning still slightly overheated (morally anyway) by last night’s unexpected manifestations of ability. Which doubtless explains why today has been one long downhill skid. Sigh. However it began at the beginning of the month with me remembering that Wolfgang’s annual road test is due in February and dutifully booking in at the garage . . . who couldn’t fit us in till tomorrow. Arrgh. ‡‡‡ And then Peter also wanted to go visit Luke § and there was some backing and forthing about this and it turned out to suit them if he went up for evening visiting hours today, and comes back tomorrow. Which left me dealing with Wolfgang. In the sluicing rain—usually I use either picking up or dropping off Wolfgang as an excuse to hurtle hellhounds in the other direction. And because I don’t wake up anything like early enough to get him out there tomorrow morning for 7:30§§ I was going to take him in tonight. Okay, I thought, we can hurtle back in time to let Colin and Niall into the cottage for handbells at five, handbells at 5 o’clock being my usual Thursday excitement . . . until I noticed that we were ringing at four and at Niall’s house, which is about a twenty-minute walk from here . . . and did I mention the rain?
And then we couldn’t ring anything. Toward the end of our two hours of self-immolation Niall looked at the other two of us and said, We aren’t usually this bad, are we? Noooooo. Sometimes we get through entire minutes without going, Crash! Frell! Sorry!
And have I told you we’re trying to learn Cambridge?
* * *
*Translation: I won the lottery. I was crowned Queen of England. They just gave me the Nobel Prize for Literature. I discovered the Elixir of Happy Creative Middle Age that Lasts Longer Than a Few Decades.^ I found the answer for world peace.^^
^ See previous blog posts for remarks about how old is better.
^^ It was behind the sofa.
** Hint: it took me months to learn Stedman. Although that was my first diabolical method, and nothing can be quite that diabolical again. It’s like learning to ring inside for the first time. You will never learn it and furthermore it is going to kill you. And then it doesn’t. Oh.
*** I find the level of self-delusion rather interesting. Lots of people think they’re, oh, say, better, ahem, writers than they are. But bad writing does not literally go CLANK.
† Which includes knowing in advance so you can have studied the line before you came to practise
†† I am so living in interesting times
††† And then Niall the Ratbag made me do it again at New Arcadia
‡ Steve Colman, The Bob Caller’s Companion, http://www.ringingbooks.co.uk/ No self-respecting Deputy Ringing Master would be without.
‡‡ WHAT DID I JUST SAY????
‡‡‡ Note to self: next year remember in January.
§ No real change. Please keep those candles burning.
§§ AAAAAAAUGH
Announcement
Jodi has an agent.
http://jmeadows.livejournal.com/ 745925.html
Our very own Jodi Meadows, Days in the Life mod, ferret wrangler, extreme knitter*, flautist, eater-of-chocolate and, lately, shoveller-of-snow . . . and writer of stories, has just accepted the offer of representation from a literary agent.
YAAAAAAY.
Back in my day it wasn’t absolutely required to have an agent, although it was generally considered a good idea. In my case Harper & Row, as it then was, took BEAUTY before I had an agent. My first novel was plucked off the slush pile. Yes. But that was over thirty years ago. Times have changed a lot.
In the present day you pretty well do need to have an agent. I don’t know if there are any commercial publishers who will look at unsoliciteds any more. But certainly if you want a crack at the Big Six you have to have an agent. And it’s going to be hard to be taken seriously even by the little independent houses if you haven’t got an agent.
Jodi wants to get published. Jodi needs an agent.
Jodi has an agent.
Did I say YAAAAAAY?
YAAAAAAY.**
Chocolate, confetti, flying ferrets, dazzle, sparkle, glitter and applause***: Go Jodi.
* * *
* ‘extreme’ in this case means she also spins and we have the guest blogs to prove it
** I never squee, of course. I’m too old. SQUEEEEEEEE.
*** Partly because I never saw anything so calm and understated as the brief announcement on her blog. THIS IS CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION. SOMEBODY NEEDS TO ACT LIKE IT.^ Eeesh.
^ Repeat after me: YAAAAAAAAY.
Guest post (mostly) by Jeanne Marie
My First Fruitcakes
B-Twin’s post on her luscious wedding fruitcakes, and some of the subsequent forum remarks on wedding cakes* in particular and fruitcakes in general, took me back to my first year living in Memphis, Tennessee. It was my first year living on my own post-college, and I was big into fancy experimental cooking. In that vein, I decided around August that I wanted to make some fancy brandied fruitcakes for the coming Christmas.**
I looked up a few recipes for fruitcakes, and found several options. I particularly wanted one that needed to soak in liquor and “age,” and at last decided on one that I thought would be a good choice. But, I was not a fan of lots of candied fruits, so I decided to sub out ALL the candied fruits the recipe included for simple dried fruits. I made twelve mini-loaf cakes, which baked up like little bricks. I wasn’t worried, though, the recipe had warned that they’d bake up very hard, but would moisten up over a few months with some brandy. I followed the recipe specifications, wrapping them in cloth and then pouring on “some” brandy (I think the recipe called for a few tablespoons, but I was feeling generous), and left them in the bottom of my fridge in ziploc bags. I checked them periodically, and usually when I checked them, I’d add more brandy. Over the months between August baking and Christmas, I added an entire fifth of brandy to those twelve mini-loaves!***
Finally, the first of many Christmas parties arrived – the faculty afternoon luncheon party for the elementary school where I was working as the music teacher! I took two of the loaves with me. At the time, I noticed that they were rather redolent of brandy, but mentally shrugged, and figured that they were supposed to be that way. When the time for the Christmas luncheon arrived, I ate a smallish piece of my fruitcake and was OVERWHLEMED by just how potent my little fruitcakes were! YIKES, I started worrying about breathing too close to the festive candles on the table! I myself was only able to handle a very small piece – I’m a bit of a light-weight in terms of liquor capacity – but, two other teachers in particular, a second grade teacher and a fifth grade teacher, were VERY happy that I had brought the “brandycakes”… and, they were even happier after dividing the cakes between them!! Both were decidedly flushed and wobbly when they headed back to their respective classrooms!!
I’ve wondered – if I had stuck with the candied fruit, would the cakes have been quite so potent? Did the dried fruit simply suck up way more brandy than candied fruit would have? Or, did I just overkill on adding way more brandy than any poor fruitcake needed? I’ve never tried to experiment with fruitcakes again, but at least those two teachers remember me fondly…if they remember that luncheon at all, that is!!
* * *
*HOLY CATS, I’m gonna NEED one of those!! gulp ^
^ Yes you are
**::cue ominous music::
***you see it coming, don’t you…
* * *
The hellgoddess continues:
Since Jeanne Marie has been so CARELESS as to lose this legendary fruitcake recipe and since of course reading about fruitcakes, with this audience, is going to lead to a lot of jonesing for fruitcakes†, I thought I’d offer one of mine. I seem to have quite a few. We had this conversation on the forum—most of us don’t like the candied-fruit-stuck-together-with-superglue style of fruitcake, but quite a few of us like the dried-fruit, brown-sugar-and-spices kind. I will spare you the defense of good candied fruit—the problem with maraschino cherries isn’t the maraschino, it’s the red food dye—and go (almost) straight to a dried-fruits-with booze recipe. I may post some of the others at a later date.†† The only way I like bourbon is in a pecan cake, for example.†††
And with reference to the conversation on the forum about fruitcakes for weddings, with several Americans saying they’ve never heard of such a thing and me saying er um, I’d have said at least half the American weddings I’ve attended had fruitcake under the white enamel and the plastic figures . . . my FANNY FARMER (copyright 1965) contains a ‘wedding fruitcake’ which is described as ‘the traditional dark rich fruit cake’, and even the alternative sponge cake (‘Bride’s cake’) is assumed to have a fruitcake top layer. Furthermore in my eternal quest to waste more time dorking around on the internet, I discover that good old bartleby.com has the 1918 FF on line and their ‘cake’ section is loaded with fruitcakes including not one but two ‘wedding cakes’ which are in fact fruitcakes. http://www.bartleby.com/87/0031.html (the wedding cakes are almost last, and don’t bother with the ‘search’, which is a baleful fraud and will keep trying to dump you in amazon).
Meanwhile.
I had been experimenting with mini fruitcakes for years before Judy Rosenberg’s Rosie’s Chocolate Packed Jam Filled Butter Rich No Holds Barred Cookie Book came out‡. I’ve got two sets of mini bread pans, half size and quarter size, and two or three little loaves of different varieties, wrapped up with different coloured ribbons around each of them, makes a very nice present for a whole lot less effort than making millions of frelling cookies.‡‡ Rosie took it a step farther and made her mini fruitcakes in muffin tins, which is also pretty brilliant, and that hadn’t occurred to me.
It was even more annoying when her recipe turned out to be a lot like mine—it amazes me how many drunken fruitcake recipes don’t tell you to soak your fruit in the booze first for example. She however dilutes hers with water. Bleh—and she likes pecans and almonds. The following recipe is enough like her mini fruitcakes you might think I started there but I didn’t. Great minds think alike in this case.
2 c assorted dried fruit (black and golden raisins, cranberries, blueberries, apricots, cherries, dates, whatever). The big stuff you want to chop to be about raisin/berry sized.
1 c chopped nuts: almonds, pecans and/or hazelnuts
1 c rum or brandy
1 c white all-purpose flour
½ c wholemeal/wholewheat/spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp allspice
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp mace
12 T (1 ½ c) lightly salted soft butter
1 c dark brown sugar
1 tsp (GOOD QUALITY) vanilla extract or ½ tsp orange essence (NOT ‘flavouring’)
1 T grated lemon or orange zest (if you’re using orange essence, I usually use more zest too)
2 large eggs at room temperature
Put the dried fruit in a shallow bowl and pour the rum or brandy over them. Put a plate over the bowl and leave for at least 48 hours and up to about a week. If your bowl isn’t shallow enough that all the fruit is in contact with the booze, stir occasionally.
Preheat oven to 350°F, and grease well your two-loaves-of-bread equivalent pans: so four half-sized loaf tins, eight quarter-sized loaf tins, or approximately 24 muffin cups. (If you’re using muffin cups . . . use paper liners. Life is short.)
Sift the dry stuff together.
Cream butter and sugar thoroughly. Add zest and vanilla or essence, and cream again. Add eggs. BEAT THOROUGHLY. Drain the fruit and add any liquid (not the fruit yet!), if there is any, to the batter. Mix.
Add the flour mixture. Stir in well. Now add the fruit and nuts. Stir again. This is the moment you may have to use your judgement. Flour varies, as does how much liquid there is left after the fruit has been soaking in it. You may need to add a little liquid–orange juice, apple juice or water–or a little flour.
Pour into your pans: depending on the size of the pan your baking time is anywhere from about 20-25 minutes (muffin tins) to about an hour and a quarter (9 x 5 inch normal bread pans). When the middles puff up and start looking solid, stick a toothpick in. When the toothpick comes out dry, etc.
Let cool in the pans half an hour or so. An hour won’t hurt. But don’t try to get them out too soon, they’ll be too fragile. (They would be less fragile if you used less butter. But . . . why would you want to use less butter?)
These don’t need to ripen, although you can turn them into little leglessness bombs if you want to (in theory the baking will have removed all the alcohol) by wrapping them in cheesecloth and dripping a little further rum on them—in which case keep them wrapped up in plastic or tin foil in your refrigerator, like Jeanne Marie did with hers, till wanted. I did this once and . . . wheeeeee. Don’t use an entire fifth, okay? (They’ll probably fall apart if you do, and then you’ll have leglessness bomb pudding.)
And I feel that, when it’s time to eat it, the true perfect drunken fruitcake should also have frosting. Frosting that goes something like: 1 c confectioner’s/icing sugar, 2T butter, cream together till smooth, and then add enough rum/brandy (2-3 T) to make it spreadable. Go for it.
* * *
† B_twin has promised a fruitcake recipe, but at the moment she’s deep in the Australian bush somewhere—with no internet connection—becoming further educated in some arcane Australian-bush skill, so she cannot be applied to in this extremity.
†† I keep meaning to post more recipes like I keep meaning to post some favourite poems (other people’s poems) and I was going to start posting book reports/reviews again this year and it’s the middle of February already and . . .
††† If I’m going to get seriously wasted in some manner that does not involve champagne, it’s going to be single malt Scotch, probably Laphroaig.
‡ Which is the follow up to Rosie’s All Butter Fresh Cream Sugar Packed No Holds Barred Baking Book. If there’s a third one, I don’t want to know.
‡‡ She says feelingly. But I’ve made millions and millions of frelling cookies too. Home made food is the answer when you have too many friends and no money.
Pink etc
I told you I’d show you my floral extravaganza again after I messed with it a little.*
Pink.
And just in case you think I’ve put all the pink in front to make an impressive photo, this is what it looks like from the other side. 
Meanwhile . . . it’s snowing. It’s not snowing like it’s snowing in Virginia, for which I am deeply thankful, but it’s still snowing. I’ve decided I want a conservatory. Once I finish recovering** from putting the weight-bearing floor in Third House’s attic I’m going to knock down the sitting-room wall into the garden and start putting up quadruple-glazed glass walls and solar baseboard heaters. I might put French doors in the main bedroom and have a sort of full-length bay window on that side too. And then I can fill it/them with tea and china roses and sasanqua camellias and orchids and greenhouse carnations and hippeastrums and freesias and maddenii rhododendrons . . . and chocolate cosmos and begonias and osteospermums and geraniums year round, and I don’t know what all else because I don’t have a conservatory and therefore try to avoid knowing too much about what I can’t grow.
And have I told you about the sedum roof? Yes. I also want to slap a green roof on Third House, which, unlike the cottage, has a nice gentle slope so the poor sedums won’t have to hold on with their fingernails. I’m not looking forward to getting planning permission*** for this but maybe by the time I get to that point† planted-up roofs will be commonplace and the government will be giving us eco-promoting grants to do it. A girl can dream.
Meanwhile I need to be grinding on with PEG II so I can finish recovering from putting the backlist-bearing floor in and begin saving up for the conservatory. And then Marechal Niel†† and I will sit with our feet up in the warm at Third House and admire the snow drifts.†††
* * *
* The kitchen magnet, which on my screen at least you can’t quite read unless you already know what it says, declares: They lied. Hard work has killed lots of people. It could have been a lot worse, given my collection of kitchen magnets.^ I tend not to remember to check for stuff like what’s behind something when I take pictures indoors, and this can be a dreadful mistake.^^
^ One tiny benefit to losing the old house and living in a cottage so small that everyone but the occasional urban flat-dweller suffers extreme claustrophobia upon stepping over the threshold+ is that I have felt free to get out my old collection of crass and insolent kitchen magnets and indeed to augment it. In the old house I used to worry about the grandchildren. Who are mostly by now too old to be disturbed by kitchen magnets, but they’re still all so polite.
+ Books not only furnish a room, they crowd you right out of it. Sometimes several rooms. Sometimes all the rooms in the house.= I was very amused when Diane in MN posted in the forum about lining hallways with bookshelves, and how well this works . . . till you run out of hallways. Yes.
= Okay, the bathroom only has books on the windowsill. Well, almost only.
^^ Some of the biggest cobwebs in England live in my cottage. This is a combination of deplorable housekeeping and a slight soft spot for spiders. I don’t want them on me, you understand, but a nice small tactful English spider that stays quietly in its corner will probably be left alone to get on with it. However any spider showing artistic initiative such as manifestations of ‘radiant’, ‘terrific’, or ‘some hellhound’ in web-weaving is totally welcome forever, and if it would like teeny weeny beakers of champagne or slivers of chocolate these will be provided.
** You’re all buying multiple copies of PEGASUS, yes?
*** Both Third House and the cottage are in a Conservation Area which means you need planning permission to prune your rosebushes—careful, you and your secateurs are altering the amenity level of the neighbourhood—and gods help you if you want to change the colour of your house. Which in fact I do. But not this year. I can’t face the paperwork. And Third House has this whacking monster Leylandii which is so frelling tall the army helicopters trip on it when they buzz overhead and I looooong to have the ugly thing down—and my neighbours are longing right along with me—but the Tree Removal Form is forty thousand pages long and looking at it makes me lose the will to live.
† After everyone has bought multiple copies of PEG II.
†† http://www.classicroses.co.uk/roses/m/marechal_niel.html We had one at the old house and while she was in a relatively sheltered position I don’t think her essential hardiness was the problem so much as her habit of trying to produce her first flush of big fat buds early enough to catch the last frelling late frost of a bad year. And unlike, say, Agnes, who is another early one, if she gets frosted, she sulks. Agnes heaves a deep sigh and starts growing a fresh lot of buds. But then Agnes is a rugosa and rugosas are tough. You have to be firm with your rugosas. Undisciplined rugosas eat unwary small children and absent-minded gardeners and are probably John Wyndham’s original source for triffids. I love rugosas. Just by the way. I have Agnes at the cottage. She’s doing really well. It’s a good thing I don’t get many visitors. With her and Souvenir and the three Mmes and a few others I have perhaps not introduced you to yet, it’s dangerous out there.
††† There are of course other problems with indoor gardening. One of the reasons the floors don’t get hoovered very often at the cottage^ is because I’m busy moving all the plants off the windowsills to clean the encrusted plant sludge off the window glass and the painted surfaces. Did you know that dark red geranium petals will stain your white woodwork? Gaah. And I want an entire conservatory? Well. Yes. I am insane. This is not news.
And you know those pretty little hyacinth vases? You put your bulb in the top and just add water? How about the fact that once the flower spike grows your hyacinth will plunge top-heavily over the side?
Creative use of large pile of magazines.
Creative use of Kleenex box. This bulb was a freller to begin with since it insisted on growing leaves at both ends.
^ aside from melting vacuum cleaners
