Difficult

I am feeling most unhappily disgruntled.

We have had a difficult day because I have been cross with Mark.

He wanted to pull up three tomato plants that had become enormous and engulfed the smaller plants in the large flower bed in the conservatory.

I like big leafy plants and thought that the rest of the bed could either get its fingers out and catch up, or just stop complaining about it. Of course plants don’t have fingers but the principle is sound.

Mark won in the end because we have got about forty other tomato plants, all doing very nicely, and these three were almost six feet tall. He pointed out that they were cutting out all of the light from everything else on that side of the bed that was not proliferating quite so enormously successfully, like the lemon tree and the basil, and it was all starting to get pale and weary.

We took them out and instantly there was a huge sunlit hole in the flower bed which made me feel very sad.

I had not wanted to lose them and was miserable for the rest of the day.

Mark suggested that we buy something tall but not quite so hugely spreading to put in its place, but I do not want some shop rubbish that somebody else has planted and nurtured and then left to get pot bound with a sticker on that says £10.99. I like to choose seeds that are not F1 hybrid, and to prepare a bed and plant them and be quietly excited by watching them grow their first little cotyledons. This is because I am old.

Also we haven’t got any cash at the moment and when I looked online everything I thought I might like was fifty quid. This gave me the opportunity to reject his proposal with martyred scorn.

He felt guilty then, which was good, and helped me replant the herb bed by the back door. We originally set this up with wicks into a bucket of water underneath, but it did not work very well and might have been the source of a slightly dodgy smell that we had noticed. Today we took it out and got rid of the water. Instead we lined the bed with plastic and filled it with compost, after which we replanted it, and Mark put a mesh up the wall for the biggest things to climb up.

I have wanted to do this for ages, and tried to be pleased about it, but it did not make up for the loss of the tomato plants, or for the trimming of various other things that had started to climb all over the sofa and which had been making him grumble into his breakfast.

We had an on-off row for the rest of the day then, because he thought that I ought to feel better and I didn’t. I stabbed the cloth crossly into the washing up and glared at him whilst he fitted the new sink. This process was slowed down because every time he asked me to come across and tell him whether something suited or was at the right height or was what I wanted, I could say: Oh, so it suddenly matters what I think, does it?

This did not make for friendly relations.

Things have not been helped along by the dog having hurt his foot. We thought at first that it might be broken, but we think now that probably it is just a nasty sprain, because he does not limp nearly so much when there is something interesting happening that he wants to know about, like, for instance, Oliver’s plates coming downstairs with some leftover pizza.

It is his front paw, which is awful. It means that he can manage most normal walking about, but coming down the stairs is just too bumpy, and so he stands at the top looking hopeful until somebody notices and picks him up. I have just had an exciting descent with the dog and a wineglass in one hand, and a jersey, a mobile phone and one of Oliver’s plates in the other, with Roger Poopy winding anxiously around my feet all the way, just in case he could be helpful.

Fortunately we have got some dog-painkillers and so we have filled him full of those. He seems to like these, in a snoozy sort of way, although he can still hear the opening of a biscuit tin from half a mile away.

I have attached another picture of the mess in our kitchen to help you understand my gloom.

I am very glad that tomorrow is another day. I have jolly well had enough of this one.