The Weather Gods have been in the most benevolent frame of mind.
Clean Sheets Day could have wished for no balmier weather.
The sun shone, and a dry little breeze set the sheets flapping energetically.
I was wearing Mark’s shorts, and it was not exactly warm, but I was not shivering and hunting for my thermal vest.
In fact the shorts-wearing had got off to an inauspicious start, when I dug out a pair of his shorts and discovered that they were a bit tight.
They were not impossibly tight, that is to say, they fastened easily enough, but they were close fitting. I like my shorts baggy and loose, and was horrified to think that I must be considerably fatter than I had imagined. Mark is not exactly slim, but he is solidly built and has a fondness for puddings, and it was depressing to think that I must be rather too large to fit comfortably into his trousers.
It took me a little while before I realised that the shorts were not Mark’s, but Oliver’s. Oliver is the chap, you will recall, who is frantically trying to gain enough weight for the Army to accept his application.
I took them off and found a pair of Mark’s shorts, which had to be tied up with string.
I felt better about the day after that.
I splashed up the fells with the dogs, and then set about the day’s labours. I had thoughtfully made a list for myself, which had quickly turned into the sort of list with extra bits scrawled in between the columns and along the bottom and wherever there was space. I had written it last night when I came home from work, and it was the sensible sort of list with lots of things on it that are easy to accomplish, like Post Letter To HMRC, which took half a minute and could be neatly dovetailed with Go To Post Office Pay In Takings, thus meaning that one trip meant two crossings-out.
Of course it was Clean Sheets Day, so there was the usual dusting and hoovering, which I did not mind in the least. I have left the present for myself of a tidy bedroom which smells cleanly of garden, sometimes life is very nice indeed. Then I planted the snowdrop bulbs and a bush that I ordered on an impulse because it is supposed to smell nice, it is called a Daphne.
I regretted the impulse when I realised that there was hardly a square inch of garden left in which to shove it, certainly not if it has any plans to grow any bigger. I always imagine that things will stay reasonably small, or at least, no bigger than the height that it says on the label, but weary experience and a gardening friend tells me otherwise. If you give things space to grow, he explained, then probably they will.
Hence I have found that unless I actually saw things off after the first year, they soon start to compete with me for living space. I am still having problems with the geranium in the conservatory, which has once again blocked off the kitchen door, and will have to be tied back again tomorrow. It is well over twenty feet tall now. Also, if anybody would like to own an enormous date palm which is now blocking out the light, please bring a shovel over. Then there is the bay tree. It will have to go before it wraps itself around the telephone wires. And the fig tree. And the burnt sugar tree. Our garden is not big enough.
I am secretly quite proud of their magnificently fecund success, despite the nuisance, as if my own green fingers could somehow be considered responsible, which they aren’t at all really. We just seem to be in a fortuitously beneficial spot for Mother Nature to flourish with enthusiasm.
I put the Daphne in with the delphiniums next to the front window, where its scent can waft into the bedroom at nights, and resigned myself to not being able to see the rest of the garden after a month or two. Then I repotted last Christmas’ poinsettia, which surprised all of us by not dying, and which I could practically hear grumbling about its cramped roots when I sat at my desk.
I have put it in the bathroom in the dark, in the hope that it might start thinking about growing some new red leaves and thus save me the expense of a new poinsettia this Christmas. I do not want my office windowsill to have any more plants on it. Between the large elephant’s foot palm on the inside and the ivy on the outside I am fully planted to the extent of my requirements.
We are planted out.
