At 2.45 a.m, a small wet and ginger snout pushed itself into my sleeping face, and an enthusiastic ginger tail beat a frantic tattoo against my recumbent legs. Nell rarely comes upstairs during the night, preferring to scooch up in her favourite corner on one of the sofas. If she does come upstairs it generally means she needs to do a poo and could SOMEONE please come downstairs and let her out NOW - that someone being me.
I slid out of bed, pulled on my dressing gown and wandered downstairs, trying all the while to not open my eyes too much. Opened the back door. Nell shot out and up the garden and I followed because I wanted to make sure she did actually want to do a poo, and she wasn’t just waking me up in the wee small hours for larks ‘n’ fun. If it was just larks ‘n’ fun then it was not a habit to be encouraged and she and I would be having a serious talk, possibly about adoption.
It was very still outside. It smelled of a fresh rain shower and the recent winds had dropped. There was half a moon overseeing a few pale stars and some barely-there clouds. The solar powered fairy lights I’d strung along the fence looked very pretty. I thought, I shall get some more fairy lights and put them everywhere! Further up the garden, I could see the shadow of a small ginger dog performing that unsteady tottering gait that precedes the arrival of a jubilant poo. Her alarm call was valid, then, and not larks ‘n’ fun. I stood and listened for the hoots of owls from the woods across the way, but hoots there were none. Of course there weren’t. It was almost three in the morning, and sensible owls would be tucked up in bed, wouldn’t they, Nell?
Poo delivered, Nell ran back indoors and settled on the sofa. I went back to bed and thought, this is one the reasons I am NEVER having another dog.
I am particularly pleased with this part of the garden at the moment:
It flanks one of the seating areas. The rose is ‘Shropshire Lass’ and she’s looking quite magnificent, being shown off beautifully by the foxgloves and some emerging ox-eye daisies. I do like it when roses settle into themselves. It might take two or three years, but it’s worth the wait.
The courtyard rose bed is coming into its own now, too.
Give it another week or so and it will be positively HEAVING with blossoms and heady scent.
Seeing the roses every year makes me think I should just plant roses everywhere and sod trying to be artistic with other shrubbery and perennials. They are easy to look after and although there was a hefty plague of aphids early this year it wasn’t anything a determined spray of soapy water couldn’t deal with. I enjoy the brutality of the pruning process each Autumn and I enjoy the roses fighting back each Spring, thumbing their noses at me as if to say, ‘You’ll never beat us with your maverick pruning methods - NEVER!’ And I love them for that spirit.
Seven weeks left to complete my diploma. Three more assignments to write. The dovecote has been taken over by what seems like hundreds of fledging blue tits and great tits, much to the consternation and outrage of the goldfinches. The baby tits have no respect for goldfinches. I expect they will learn. And in the last three days I have spied some angry-looking swallow babies peering over the edge of the nest in the laundry. They’ll be fledging soon, and then there will be trouble.
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KJ