Potty

We slept, and slept, and slept.

It is hard to write very much about a day that didn’t actually get started until two in the afternoon.

I did some things, though.

I brought in the mint which has been drying under the glass bit of the conservatory. This was quite surprisingly oily. I rubbed it into fragments for mint tea and put it into a tin.

After that I had an argument with Mark.

I am not sure that argument is the right word, because it implies that there are two conflicting points of view which can be discussed and resolved, and in this case there weren’t. Mark was just completely wrong, and so I shouted and he listened.

The not-argument was about the mess in the conservatory, the two years that he has been building it so far, and the lack of result. There was a further outburst of disgruntlement about the stupid tiresome solar water heater that he is currently building and which needs to be completed and affixed to the wall before the rest of the conservatory is put in place.

This could not be proceeding more slowly if it was being constructed by a dolphin, and in any case, I reminded him, will be no use whatsoever. Even when the stove is lit and we have hot water in the winter we do not use it. This is because the tank is so far away from the kitchen that you have to run two gallons of water off before the hot water gets through. I think that this is a shocking waste of expensively cleaned and processed water, and so we just fill kettles and heat those.

I explained, in a shouty sort of way, that if he was determined to waste his time on plumbing instead of building a conservatory, he needed to address that issue first. I agreed that the sunnily heated hot water could also be used to bubble through a central heating system, but felt that this was probably an unnecessary extra, for reasons which are presumably obvious to everybody.

Mark listened without any noticeable enthusiasm.

He went outside into the yard and grudgingly tidied up some of the worst of the construction-related mess. I ought to have been pleased but I wasn’t.

The conservatory was supposed to have been built for last Christmas. I am not feeling positive about its likely completion for this one. It is becoming a source of marital discord.

I soothed my indignation by pottering about tidying up the plant pots in the garden. My mother has grown and donated some new house plants. I am pleased about this, because I do not have any house plants at the moment, except for a solitary amaryllis. This has been having a little summer holiday in the garden and something has eaten a ragged hole in its single leaf. It is not very pretty at the moment.

I have been thinking about this for a while. I would like to have lots of plants in the house, since I haven’t got a conservatory. It could become a haven of oxygenated green freshness, making my living space fresh and bursting with life instead of being sterile and dusty. I have visions of myself floating about amongst them, in a natural sort of way, harmoniously spraying their leaves and breathing in the newly purified air.

I am wearing a flowery smock in this vision. I have not got one. I will look on eBay. It is probably made from ecologically sustainable bamboo and also makes me look thinner.

Hence my enormous satisfaction at being handed a running start at this project. There are several cactus like things, a traily thing and a spider plant, which should make my air start to be different almost straight away.

I have decided to arrange them nicely in a couple of pretty pots and then hang them up in the shell plant pot hanger that we bought in Blackpool, except I don’t have any pretty pots. That is to say, I do have some pretty pots but they are all in the garden where they have got rather sluggy flowers in them.

Most of them had disappeared behind a disorderly tangle of sweet peas anyway. I cut the sweet peas back and decided that the flowers were still flowery enough not to be dug up just yet. I left them alone and considered my pretty pot options.

I found an empty pot that was quite pretty, but it was smelly. I washed it out and it was still smelly, so I put it in the garden to air out a bit.

I found some boring plant pots but they were the wrong size. Then I went to the ironmonger, who told me that they were all sold out of plant pots of any description, because it is not plant pot season.

I went back and investigated the smelly pot, but it was still smelly, so I washed it again, and realised that it was getting late and I ought to be getting ready for work.

I will consider it again tomorrow.

I am going to look on eBay for plant pots and flowery smocks.