Sunny day things

Sunday morning after the clocks go back: the sun well up at a comparatively early hour, encouraging me to go out and do something about my shambles of a garden. Once I'd had my breakfast, I set down my book and headed outside.

(It's another Georgette Heyer. Only a few chapters in, and I'm already fairly certain that the murderer is the helpful neighbour, who will presumably turn out to be the grumpy General's first wife, stabbing her ex-husband so her son doesn't get disinherited for marrying a Mexican cabaret dancer. But I could be wrong.)

I've been neglecting my garden lately. It gets that way at this time of year, when everything I enthusiastically planted in spring has flowered, fruited and gone a bit straggly. We've had water restrictions in place recently too: somehow weeds still flourish while the grass dies off.

My lawn was in particular need of attention. While I don't aspire to the manicured perfection favoured by the male of the species, the lawn has lately dropped below even my easily achieved standards - it was weedy, and in desperate need of mowing. But I set that aside until a reasonable hour for noisy mowers and started on the garden.

Weeding is quite satisfying once you get started. I cheerfully made my way along the fence garden, only slightly hampered by the inexplicable design of my gardening gloves, which are extra long on the index finger. This makes it quite difficult to grasp the weeds, and I frequently discard my gloves and get my hands grubby, which defeats the purpose of wearing them in the first place. Never mind, we're all about washing hands these days anyway, right?

It took me the rest of the morning to finish the weeding, periodically pausing to dust myself off and hang up a load of washing, or to come inside for a cuppa and a piece of ginger crunch. Lunch was mushrooms, bacon and tomatoes on toast, served up with a couple more chapters of the murder mystery (inevitable arrival of a Scotland Yard Inspector; suspects nervously await interviews).

After lunch I finally got out the lawnmower. Now that I've done the mowing, dug out some of the more obtrusive weeds and tidied the edging, the garden is looking a bit more respectable. There's plenty more to do, but that'll have to wait until my green bin is emptied. 

Gardening complete, I came inside to clean up. Since my shower was almost as grubby as I was, I gave it a spray and a scrub, then (pausing only to cut my finger changing the blade of my 'safety' razor) got in and cleaned both self and shower.

And now we're reaching the other end of that first day after Daylight Savings - an earlier sunset, the day cooling off before you notice it's happening. I've bought in my washing, but despite hanging for hours in the sun and wind, it all has a slight dampness to it yet. Probably I left it out too long. It's now draped strategically in sunny patches around the house. Hopefully it'll be dry enough to put away this evening. But in the meantime, I'm going back to my book, to see if I'm right about that suspiciously helpful neighbour.