Caged bird

I think I know what it must feel like to live in an aviary. I have spent most of the morning crouching under the big netting in the beans and pea quadrant working away at chores.   Every time I look I up I see nets, and in the distance I hear a din of bird calls.   The crows are busy overhead today. And the woodpecker and cuckoo are making a racket.

It’s hot.   Suncream and hat and sleeves rolled up.   And with a breeze that brings cherry blossom wafting over the whole terrace.

Ooh, purple indeed. Lack of sleep and not enough tea.   Fear not, it will settle and you will just get lists. Promise.

And here it is: eight runner beans, over sixty cosmos plants, four nasturtiums, a row of spring onions  and one tomato plant. And mulch, mulch, mulch. Five o’clock and I’m done. In all senses.

The cosmos is hopefully going to form a small hedge against the deer who didn’t seem to like it last year.   I planted purity, sensation and a new variety (for me) dazzler.   The purity doesn’t do as well for me as the sensation; the white tends to get a bit ratty by midsummer.   But naturally it doesn’t really shine until the autumn so I have to be patient with its ragged bits.

Passing the roses on the courtyard level (to escape the heat briefly) I removed some errant grubs which have started to colonise. So it feels good to be on top of that.   But there is so much else to do.

What else?  Oh yes   I watered the trees on the lower terraces, admiring the blossoms on the neighbouring apples, some on my newly planted trees, and looked with a bit of concern at the burgeoning grass. Time to bring back the horses.