THERE’S LOVING TO BE DONE - 20 May 2011

20th May 2011  

Today Joel got his no-nonsense time-line from Phaidon for finishing the work on his retrospective book and I think it put a squib under him because he disappeared into his studio right after breakfast and apart from lunch on the deck and tea in the rose garden, he’s been hard at it all day.

I decided to do some gardening. The thing I’ve been avoiding all week, aided by rain. But today the sun arrived and so I started by mowing the lawn. You can’t turn your back on 11 years of work turning a barren sand lot into a wild and wooly garden. Until we’re gone from here it has to be loved, and I’m the one to do it. So, in for a pound, as the saying goes.

Once the grass was mown I drove to the nursery and pretended it was just another beginning of the season spree. I loaded up my trolley with rosemary, lemon verbena, basil, sage and moved on to ground covers for a new bed I’d created last autumn:  a couple of sedums – stonecrop rosy glow, and sedum reflexum blue spruce, a couple of Creeping Speedwell’s whose tiny periwinkle blue flowers always cheer me up, and one lovely, hearty Pink.  If you’re a gardener you know how it is when you get started.

How could I leave the planters empty? Come On. Let’s have some coral rose Diascia and some white Bacopa and oh, good, they have my favorite Princess of India nasturtium whose rich blood red looks so good blazing next to the fountain. And while we’re at it I’ll take a few orange nasturtiums to bung in the veggie beds.

Oh, all right, give me a dozen cosmos, they always look so sweet and whimsical at summers end and in a good year last right into October. October? We’ll be in Provence. And who knows, maybe some lucky souls will have moved into our old home. I can see them now, snipping a couple of cosmos to put in a vase, along with the last of the season’s roses.