Springing

I have been preparing for spring.

I have not planted anything, because it is not spring yet, and also because I have not yet prepared seed beds for planting anything at the moment. It is not because I am not longing to plant seeds, although it is very early. Nevertheless I am beginning to feel the spring slowly beginning to trickle into life.

I am feeling very pleased about this, because with the spring somehow a new sense of optimism has filled my soul. I do not mean in relation to our current national crisis, in which I have gradually lost interest. I mean in relation to life, and exciting things.

I can hardly believe that it was only a couple of weeks ago that I was feeling bored, and at a loss. Suddenly the world is bursting with things that need to be done.

Today I turned my attention to the conservatory.

I have not been in there for ages, partly because it is cold, but also because it has been making me feel guilty. A winter of dead leaves were strewn over the flower beds. The plants were not fresh and green, but grey with dust  from Mark’s roof-mending activities, and the little orange tree, which is one of my favourites, had got a cobweb on it.

This was a particularly alarming development, because we bought a tree last year which turned out to be completely infested with spider mites.

As soon as we realised we dug it out and disposed of it, but ever since then I have been looking at things with alarmed concern, just in case the spider mites were catching.

Today I made a soapy spray and sprayed and wiped all of the leaves, carefully.

I think the cobwebs belonged to actual spiders and not spider mites in the end, because I spotted one or two making a hasty dash for safety, but if there are any spider mites now I can  feel confident that the leaves will taste so completely horrible that they are most unlikely to want to eat them. I cannot imagine any creature wishing to consume Asda’s Gentle On Your Hands But Kills All Bacteria and Viruses Stone Dead So You Don’t Need To Spend An Extra Fifty Pence On The One You Saw On Telly soap. Even diluted.

I washed all of the leaves of everything, and pulled off any dead ones. I thought I would get rid of the dead pineapple plants, which were looking a bit brown and miserable, but when I tugged them out they turned out not to be dead after all, so I put them back.

I cleaned the whole flower bed in the conservatory. This involved some excitingly precarious balancing. I do not walk on flower beds if I can help it, because John Seymour, who is one of my gardening superheroes, loads better than the television one without the underwear, said that it is best if you don’t. Hence I had to stand on the edge and flatten my back against the windows.

You might remember I had a bit of a go at balancing, in the recent past, on one leg with my eyes shut, and turned out not to be very good at it.

I was not very good at this either.

The edge bit is about the width of the balancing beam for gymnasts at the Olympics. I am about eight stones heavier than all of them put together, and lack their muscle tone, youth, and ability to wave one leg in the air.

I wagged about in extreme anxiety, envisaging crushed hyacinths and an embarrassing emergency trip to the hospital, but in the end it was all right, and I scrubbed the whole edge clean whilst I was up there.

All my muscles are aching now, in consequence of such a strenuous effort.

When I had done I hung some lights over the bed.

We have had these since last year and just never got around to putting them up. They are the sort of lights that make plants, who are easily deceived, think that it is sunny, even if it is night time.

I am hoping to fool them into blossoming into luxurious new growth.

I have saved one for the seed bed, when we do it.

I took the dining table to bits and replaced the top with the smaller one, since we are not expecting visitors at the moment. We will not go into details about this, because it was a humiliatingly undignified experience. I was astounded to discover how difficult it was to dismantle a table with Mark’s heavy electric screwdriver, whilst lying on my back underneath it and trying to prop it up with my legs. This was because I was too idle to move all the rest of the furniture around so that I would have enough space to turn it upside down, but in the end I had to. After that things improved a bit.

I swept and tidied and felt pleased with myself, before I remembered that the rest of the house was utterly trashed, and I had not cooked dinner, nor sausages for sandwiches, nor biscuits. After that the end of the day turned into an unseemly flap.

I did not take a picture of the lovely conservatory. I will do that tomorrow, which will be a confusing addition to a post about something else, but you are perfectly capable of working it out.

Have a picture of some trees. I took it the other day but have forgotten where.