31 August 2021

August has been... about gardening

 

Part of our garden; my veg plot in the left background.



It wasn’t supposed to be about gardening. It was supposed to be about lazing on a sunlounger with my Kindle in one hand and a cool glass of fizz in the other. Or, if pushed, a notebook and pen for when the muse decided to strike a glancing blow with her serrated wand.

Instead, it has been mostly cutting back spent blooms and staking survivors against the wind, which on some days has sounded as if a winter gale attempting to suck out the double glazing, or doggedly putting in a shift with the watering can in the early evening beneath a clear sky when it has been cloudy throughout normal daytime. Or, as happened twice, running round the house with a rain-hat on my head and an old bath towel over the shoulders of my clothing, bucketing water from one set of overflowing barrels to the other which were gaining a mere trickle from the roof in comparison. Rain, I always thought, was supposed to fall straight, not near enough horizontally. Not in August.

As I write this, and yes it is Bank Holiday weekend when the town should be full to bursting with holidaymakers building sandcastles and throwing themselves gleefully into the sea, the breeze is buffeting what are left of the flowers, it is drizzling on and off, and the temperature is only 3C warmer than Iceland – and Iceland is having a bad day. Spring was late and now Autumn is early. At this rate we'll soon be eating stew and dumplings.

But back to the writing. Have I been doing any? Yes, though it could hardly be described as intensively. I so admire those novelists who can let all the extraneous bits of life and constant interruptions flow around them without derailment.

However, there is good news: I have titles on promotion during part of September, so sign up in the right column to Follow the Blog to have the info delivered to your inbox as soon as it becomes available. You might even enjoy some of them. And I promise not to grumble about the weather. Well, half promise.