more from the lawn (or what's left of it)

so, the post swine flu period. when i should be all recovered and the like. except i'm not. sparkling form on the bike last week but this week, post night shift, so not. the mystery hay fever that appeared post flu is much worse and i'm feeling just 'not right'. so much so i may even go to the comedy that is the gp. who will say something post viral, then i'll have to go back to work, take my own bloods and start from there.

anyway that could all get me down, esp as this afternoon it's actually sunny so i should really be on the bike but, as it is, i make a foray into the garden. which is blooming. i should take pictures and maybe later i shall. vegetables are growing out of the ground and we are eating them. it seems somehow magical.

i fiddle about with herbs and cold frames, replant some tomatoes. one side of the front of the house is full of trees, gages, bays and a lilac, so that i can sit down among them and the world recedes. our campaign to get bees in the garden has been so successful we're convinced there's a bumble bee nest in the fuchsia. the beans and peas are growing like they've a mind of their own.

shortly we (or rather the man i'm going to pay) is going to dig most of the rest fo the back garden up so we can plant even more fruit bushes and the likes. i can hardly wait. it turns out that the garden activity and its effect on the neighbours - not speaking to us, snidey comments, strife - is nothing new tho i'm hoping that amy's experience will be shared by us and people will engage at some point. we share plants with some other people down the road so we're hoping they'll be by soon so they can help us enthuse over our sweet pea hedge.

gardening enthusiasm was tempered somewhat by the news this week that the bbc is going to sell the blue peter garden and replace it with a virtual one. what a bag of arse. while they'll obviously have to be moving property to do away entirely with a garden constructed for children, particularly given the flabby state of the nation's offspring, and to replace it for yet another opportunity to flob in front of a computer seems particularly stupid. i am with brillat-savarin when he says le destinee de nations depend de la maniere dontelles se nourrissent. i suspect however that the health bit of all this will be overlooked by the daily mail types of this world and they'll demand it be preserved as part of the nation's heritage rather than just built elsewhere, bigger and better. I should take a picture of the kids garden down the road at the primary school and send it to the bbc tho i'd probably end up getting arrested.

the wee untalkative lassie next door is obviously interested in the garden. does she even realise she can eat these plants? has she ever eaten berries off the bush? i doubt it. her mother refused all the bulbs we offered her and when she was given sunflowers to take home from school sneaked out at night to chop them down with scissors because she 'couldn't be bothered'. shameful. our response? a wall of sunflowers

so i guess it's never just about sitting in the garden even when it is. i wish i had a normal job where i could actually see my mates and they could give me a hard time about the plant growing instead of drinking myself senseless and despite not speaking to them i sometimes find myself wishing my parents could visit but the likelihood of that is about as much of the likelihood of me being out on the bike today. and i miss the lolling when t's there and i can adopt a more supervisory role. but maybe that's the advantage of being post viral. i can sit in the sun in between the rain, try to finish proust but really think about bachelard again, listen to the leaves rustle, the bees, let my eyes droop and enter the land of reverie