Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Neglect . . .

is a very bad thing.

There's scarcely anything in my life that I haven't neglected badly in the last month or so.  I have neglected the housework, the vacuuming hasn't been done, dust lies thick on every surface, the ironing basket is as high as it can be without toppling over onto the floor, the laundry baskets are overflowing, the kitchen floor desperately needs sweeping.

I have neglected the garden, weeds haven't been pulled out, nothing has been watered, the roses haven't been pruned.  The fishpond has been neglected, and the fish are swimming around in pea soup.  The dogs have been neglected, even though they all went to the vets last weekend for their annual shots, their winter coats are knotty and matted and need a good brush.

One place I have been busy is in the sewing room.  A quilt has been loaded onto the quilting frame, a process which takes some time and causes a lot of aching back muscles, and an attempt has been made to creatively quilt.  To a point where I had achieved 20 'elements' strategically  placed on the quilt top.  That took a frustrated day and a half to do.  It's now taken me three days to 'unsew' it all, stitch by stitch. How completely unsatisfying.

I neglected to pick the mandarins from the tree.  Our neighbour swears you have to leave them there until we have had a frost, which somehow sweetens them.  I looked at them a fortnight ago, loaded onto the little tree.  I looked again a week and a half ago - about 99% of them were on the ground with a little bit chewed out of each one.  The white cockatoos had been busy!  This is what I ended up with -


and a whole bucket of chewed ones went in the bin!  Bad, bad birds!

And of course, straight after that, we got the frost we'd been waiting for.  Not one but three on consecutive mornings.  Here is the heliotrope in the driveway bed.


I had admired it's vanilla-secented flowers only the day before it looked like this.

Here are the hanging pots of 'Nodding Violet' on the front verandah -


There are some cheerier things to be seen in the garden.  The new Snowdrops, 'Galanthus elwesii', have come up in the bed near the front steps.


Funny how they almost come through the surface with a flower already there.

The mulberry tree is already getting new leaves.


That's a fuzzy looking Merlin in the background.  I hope we don't get any more frosts now that the leaves are coming.

And to add to all this doom and gloom, tomorrow is my birthday and I will be a whole year older than I am today.  Woe is me!