Easter Saturday

Saturday 4 April 2015

Sunny

Easter Saturday

Art en Vrac weekend

Woke up early with thoughts of going down to the rental units and working on the newsletter but instead finished off reading John Grisham’s King of Torts.  Story of mass class actions and legal greed.  Not very edifying.  Started reading a murder mystery featuring DCI Banks and this was much more enjoyable and intricately woven.  Were policemen ever like this?  Tortured and beer drinking and enjoying the cigs whilst having small pangs of guilt?  Lusting after suspects and victims and having a good girl mate working at their side?

Went back to sleep and was woken up by OH at 10 am when we did go down to the rental units where the 3g key consented to work and I spent hours loading up new property, ringing suspects and prospects, emailing and trying to establish a running order for Monday’s visits.  As it is Easter Saturday, everyone was out.  OH went home for lunch and I finally finished about 4 pm and wandered around town and looked at the art exhibits.  They were mostly very large and featured men at work and play.  I don’t know who, out of the locals, would have a wall large enough to fit them or enough light to see them.  Our town has existed since the 12^th century and the majority of the inner town properties date from between the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  Clustered close together with tiny cobbled venelles in-between, the interiors are sombre and claustrophobic.  Not aided I have to say for the Latin love of gas and gothic and the colour brown has more tender here than anywhere else I have ever seen.

Back home and started on the weeds, of which there are absolutely millions.  I used to love gardening, but now when I stand and look what needs to be done, my heart sinks and I think ‘Oh God, here we go again’.  In the UK, I had an even larger garden but I would do work in the morning and then garden in the afternoon before picking up the children.  If the weather held, I would also do a little after supper or when the children were in bed.  OH was often working away at the time.  RJ would be stressed because I was outside of the house and would watch me from his bedroom window until the light faded and I came back in.  Where we lived it was often too wild and wet to garden, often it snowed, and it was as windy as the shores of Hell, but it was never, ever, too hot to garden.  If the temperatures touched shoulders with 24 degrees, it was thought of as a heatwave.

 

Here, there is a narrow window of opportunity around Easter, to get on top of the weeds and to get planted out everything that needs to go into the veg garden.  I then lay on paper, newspaper and grass clippings and hay to insulate the garden from the dreaded weeds and the killer heat.  By May, the garden has exploded into colour and it all is worthwhile and then it is just a question of keeping on top of the rampant growth and hauling out the more audacious weeds.  June, July and August you have a limited period early on in the day to get some weeding done or otherwise it is far too hot and you have to close yourself in the house behind the shutters, or escape to the coast or the mountains.  The weeds never suffer.  They never burn.  Happily neither do the vine fruits which seem to be able to tolerate vast amounts of sun.

OH discovered that the sit and ride mower has a completely flat battery so put it on recharge and had to spend six hours mowing with the petrol mower.  He only bought the tractor mower when both the boys left home and I became busy at work, otherwise we all used to take a turn, mowing until a tank of fuel had been used up.   The main lawn is very soggy early in the year, and it is too wet for the tractor mower, so often the first cut has to be done manually.

Watched Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights.  Rather magnificent.