I have planted the very first seeds.
I don’t know if they will all come up, because some of them are left over from last year, and hence might turn out to be duds, but I will know in a week or two, which will hardly be too late to replace them
All the same, I am beside myself with the excitement of it.
This time of year always feels like the beginning of joy all over again. The birds start to fall in love with one another, and hop about coyly on the chimney pots, showing off their fine beaks and masculine stick-collecting abilities. The dogs get too hot in their shaggy winter coats and start scratching and fidgeting, and I start to feel the terrible itch to make things grow.
We had got an enormous tub of soil in the conservatory already. This was an absolutely brilliant start, because it takes soil quite some time to warm up enough for seeds to believe that it is a comfortable place to hatch out. If we have to bring it in from the farm it is sodden, and cold, and nothing wants to grow in it at all for ages, except stinging nettles, who seem to send their babies everywhere, and who are utterly indifferent to inhospitable conditions. I expect the Mars rover will find a few up there when they start to have a proper root around.
This soil was warm and rich and crumbly, and best of all, it was absolutely crawling with worms, who have enjoyed a warm winter in the conservatory, dozily wriggling through last year’s sheep poo.
To my horror I discovered another maggoty vine weevil, two, in fact, and although I dug through the soil carefully and could not find any more, of course you cannot be at all sure. It was perfectly possible that there could have been dozens, hiding under bits of eggshell and keeping quiet.
I belted upstairs to order some weevil-eating nematodes on Amazon. I do not know if these really work, and worse, they cost a tenner, so I will tactfully not mention it to Mark. This is because we promised one another that we would be careful with the cash this week, because we need to tax my car, but he will never notice and I can shove it back again when the Queen kindly sends us back the fuel money for trailing up and down from Carlisle last week.
I filled the seed box with soil and put it carefully on a couple of bricks on the floor. The floor is heated, so it should stay warm, and I hung the growing lights over the top of it. You can see these in the picture. They are strings of red and blue lights which are supposed to mimic daylight, although if they do then plants are very easily fooled, because I do not think they are in the smallest bit like daylight, even if you were to be condemned to live on the worst of badly maintained social housing estates.
There are no green lights because plants are not interested in green light, and reflect it back. This is presumably what makes them appear green, and in fact we define them by the bit they have rejected, a bit like Oliver telling school that we give him sprouts for dinner.
The overall blue-and-red glow effect is mildly sinister, like the sort of nineteen seventies science fiction film that used to feature test tubes and mad people in white coats.
With any luck the seeds will be stupid enough to believe in all of these deceptive manoeuvres, and start to poke their heads out to see the world.
By then we will have built the new flower beds, of course we will, oh ye of little faith.
We will have built the flower beds and warmed up some more soil and have made a start on the Opulent Design project. I wondered this morning if Mark could perhaps build a castle wall against the existing wall, complete with pillars, so that we could paint a brilliant picture and showcase some of the more beautiful climbing plants, but he said no, even though I explained that we could run watering pipes behind it and that it would improve the insulation.
Whatever we finish up doing, we are going to have a day off and make a start this weekend. I hope very much that it will be tomorrow.
Opulence here we come.
