PROGRESS

 

Look! Look! LOOK!

 

And then, of course, it rains. It doesn’t necessarily rain enough to do the soil or your plants any good, it just rains enough to stop the Wall Man walling any further.

I hope he has an indoor job too.  Bookbinding or something.

BUT I HAVE A BACK WALL TO MY GREENHOUSE AGAIN.

 

YAAAAAAAAAAY.  And I am LONGING to get the greenhouse put back together.  It’s not like it’s ever tidy but for example I’m planting roses and my bone meal [fertilizer] has disappeared.  The greenhouse may not be tidy but I can find stuff.*  And if I don’t get my potting table back soon I’m going to need a kidney belt.

But I need Atlas to put the shelf back up, re-line the wall that is shared with Theodora’s summerhouse, and heave the table back into place—at the moment it’s sitting next to/under Souvenir de la Malmaison, who is beginning to stir out of her winter sleep and will engulf the thing if it doesn’t get moved soon.**

So what happens?  That selfish ratbag Atlas chose to get FLU this week.  How thoughtless can a man be?

ALMOST. Almost, almost, almost FRELLING ALMOST.

 

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest. . . .

Speaking of pansies. And daffs.

Cottage front steps.  And the daffs are Tete a tete and they smell.  It’s like, you know, spring.

I feel a little carried away when there are REAL FLOWERS again after an unnecessarily long winter. I know, I know, in Vermont it’s STILL winter. But this is not Vermont. I don’t think.

 

Too cute or what. There’s this to be said for all the stupid cold weather: my crocuses have lasted amazingly.

And those adorable purple and orange pansies . . . spent the winter in the plastic trays I originally bought them in.  Bad me.  I fed them a couple of times–clearly–but only potted them up last week and they’ve all gone like WOW.   Now, speaking of my bad luck with pansies, these are just common-or-garden variety garden centre pansies–and spent the winter in their shop trays.  What are we betting that they’ll have taken over the front of the house by next year?

FRITILLARIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Trust me, this is as exciting as the wall.

In the stair picture, if you were standing on the left of the photo facing the house, the fritillaries are in a little mostly-empty planter (which will have a great throbbing dahlia in it later on if all goes well) to the right of the daffodils.

Speaking of even more pansies. I LOVE pansies. These are more of the ones that had a happy winter in their original shop trays.

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong about pansies.  Maybe they like being neglected and left to cope in heinous conditions and all this careful soil mix and good drainage thing is inaccurate and misguided.

* * *

 * Usually.

** She’s already practising for atrocities to come by making small dangerous snatches at me as I try to sneak past her.