I am not at work and I am halfway down a glass of gin flavoured with lemon and cherry aperitif.
Truly life has few greater joys.
There is a leg of lamb in the oven, and the smell is wafting up the stairs. I have left Mark to stir the rice, and he and Ritalin Boy are pottering happily around the kitchen.
I think it might be past Ritalin Boy’s bedtime, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He is having a contented evening playing on his computer and planning to share his bed with the dog later. He likes this idea, almost as much as the dog does, and I have said that it is his bed and so he can do what he likes.
All children should share their bed with a dog every now and again. It is good preparation for being married later on.
The dinner is smelling very splendid. We are waiting to eat until Oliver gets home from work, which won’t be until ten. I do wish he would hurry up.
I have had a busy sort of day. I think I am going to go out with Ritalin Boy tomorrow, and so today was filled with getting as much done as possible.
I have cut the front lawn.
I have not cut this at all this year, because I decided that I would have a Bee Garden, which is the sort of garden that belongs to people who are too idle to bother about getting the strimmer out. I left the lawn until it was yellow with buttercups, and let everything grow as much as it liked.
I think it has been making the postman’s life a bit difficult, not least because the fennel by the front door is almost ten feet tall, and drips when it rains.
Everything has become colossal.
The buttercups are finished now, so today I thought I would trim some of it back so that we could perhaps allow a little light to filter into the underground window again.
Being downstairs in our house is rather delightfully like being in a magical cave at the moment. Both the conservatory and the window at the other end had become so overgrown that they were not letting in any light at all, other than a sort of greenish glow.
I rather like this. It has a sort of enchanted, cool feeling, like being Merlin after Nimue got hold of him, and was brilliant when the weather was really hot a couple of weeks ago.
Today I thought I would trim the undergrowth back around the window, and cut the grass a bit so that the postman could get to the front door without needing a machete.
The sun was shining, and I was astonished to see just how many bees there actually were. There were dozens and dozens, mostly in the mint, but also in the tiresome yellow loosestrife that has been spreading like a Delta variant.
A passing lady stopped in the road to have a look as I was admiring it all.
“About time you cut it,” she said, disapprovingly, because this is Windermere and we do not keep our opinions to ourselves.
“It’s a Bee Garden,” I said, indignantly.
“You don’t want to encourage them. You’ll be stung, and then you’ll be sorry,” she said, and huffed off.
I took a picture of one of the bees anyway, and you will be pleased to hear that I was not stung.
LATER NOTE: We are just going to bed. It is midnight. Oliver and Ritalin Boy are humming along quietly upstairs, watching something unsuitable on YouTube, and Mark is in the shower. We have just come in from a very squeaky game of piggy-in-the-middle in the Library Gardens, in the dark with Roger Poopy’s luminous ball. Oliver and Ritalin Boy bounced around on one side of the field, Mark and I were on the other, and the dogs were in the middle.
They barked a lot, and hurtled about, and after a while Pepper came to join in, and all in all it was a lovely end to the day.
I have told Ritalin Boy that he can go to bed when he likes as long as he cleans his teeth. I think the dog is there already, in anticipation.
I would like to go to bed now.
I have cleaned my teeth and everything.
