Planting, Plans, Pants, And Perfection

7/5/22 Saturday
I am raring to be back to work shenanigans. Little Care Client has not been well though, so she is having a quiet sleepy day. We make do with a YouTube beach; the garden pots are watered, the window ajar, the washing machine rumbling. Mr is at Paddock Garden clearing the storm-felled ash, ready for track building times. As is usual, we are not sure when our contractor will appear. It's a little frustrating mixed with the excitement of surprise.

8/5/22 Sunday
Coffee in bed, listening to birdsong, peering at weather forecasts. Watered the polytunnel which seems untenanted since last week’s pest control clearance. It will soon fill up: lulls and excess is how it rolls.
My drive to work starts sunny; gathers mist from Bodmin onwards. My legs are cold but my dress has a bright floral print, my scarf is cobalt blue, my shoes are giraffe print and fun. At work I have shopping chores - batteries for the noisy toys little Care Client loves the best, and canes for her peas - which allows me to also gather up sale rail plants; pink and purple flower bushes, a chunky pot of citrusy thyme; for myself, and generally daydream of planting everything everywhere. Kitchens become kitchen gardens, bathrooms are jungles, living rooms crammed with lilies: don't look for your bedroom you sleep in a tree now.

9/5/22 Monday
Wolf spiders in the polytunnel are congregating in the strawberry patch under the grapevine, many of them hefting egg sacs. I re-pot yesterday's plant bargains before washing the earth from my hands and heading for work. Little Care Client is perkier today, she plays her guitar with vigour. It is misty-sunny in St. Austell, fresh but warm. We have the windows open, washing on the rotary line, flowers blinking in a light breeze; water sounds on YouTube. 

10/5/22 Tuesday Pausing only for pasty purchases, we head to Paddock Garden where all the latest plant bargains are found homes, and Dog scrounges our pasty crusts. 
The pink cordyline on the earth mound- which is a grassy overgrown knoll now- has not survived, so I am thinking to replace it with an acer which I could weave into the cobnut on the corner, and make one of my favourite things: an arch. Cobnut is barely a foot high, so it will take a while and I can then plan what else to weave in: honeysuckle, jasmine, ivy- so many pretty plans!
The sun gains strength. It bakes our feet in our boots. Dog lies in the shade of the van, snoozing. Short grass grows thick, taller grasses grow in patches, swaying under seed weight. Buttercups glow yellow, pimpernels make clouds of blue.

11/5/22 Wednesday
Wake to rainfall. Our wildflower seeds need a soaking, and all of yesterday’s plantings too. It’s good when the sky does the work. Dog had a vet check-up mid-morning; she is old, arthritic, but on the whole in healthy condition. She seems smug. The vet had given her a treat for being well behaved. Meanwhile, I constructed a large map of Paddock Garden ready for a planting plan, although we need to do some measuring to check the scale... plans and plants, they grow at their own pace.
This evening: I stay home to cook roast - it smells so delicious my stomach is passive-aggressively mumbling trying to undermine the anticipatory delight: I choose mind over matter for this fight, stomach, but in the end we will both win.
Update: Yes, it’s a win.
Later this evening: Dog wakes herself in a scramble- too late. There’s poop on the sofa- luckily we always have a coverlet in place for such emergencies. Habit takes her outside; suddenly she’s barking an alert and Mr is shouting ‘No!’ because there is a hedgehog, now rolled up and feeling unwelcome, on our doorstep. Dog gets prickled, there’s no sign of harm to our guest. We put a piece of banana down by way of apology and leave Little Hog to recover in peace. The fruit goes uneaten so I lob it into the undergrowth. Sorry about Dog, dear hedgepig. We were delighted to see you. Hope you find the banana, or some delicious banana-stuffed slugs.

12/5/22 Thursday
Cloudy, sunny, heat bundled in clouds. After our coffee ritual, Mr gets on with fixing machinery, I with polytunnel and general chores; slowly washing up while fat renders in a frying pan, and leftovers are prepped, some as a curry. Leftovers is my all-time favourite food, being inventive and always a bit different. Dog gets a bone to chew on the lawn.
Our lawn, though kept mowed, is bio-diverse (aka packed with weeds) and edged in wild undergrowth so there’s plenty of habitat space for hedgehogs, multitudinous pollinators, frogs, slugs, spiders, beetles, newts, lizards, and all the critters (whether Dog cares to share or not).

13/5/22 Friday
Covering a short shift today for a colleague whose partner has a fracture clinic appointment. It provides me with a good opportunity for an after-work swim. Dog left a dotted trail from the living room to the front door earlier this morning. Friday the Turdteenth? I had better check the sewage report before I hit the waves. 
After work, Carlyon Beach: no poop. Picked up the wrong swim bag, so also no swimsuit. This is barely a deterrent. I enter the water in t-shirt and pants, a classic combo.
Ah, here I am: me, the waves, the blues and greens, one seagull, one cormorant, swirls of curling seaweed dotting dark on the pale sand, sun sparkles on the water- if a diamond could be worked like a sheet of silver, and if it could breathe, it would look like this. 
Hide under my scarf to get changed, my jeans are lined with damp sand, the seagull sounds very much as though it is laughing- I am smirking, full of fun.

It doesn’t have to be perfect to be perfect.