Mr Granite

I can’t believe how ungrateful our roses are. To be completely fair, it’s only the purple roses. To be precise, the bush that used to sit outside the kitchen window and had the most divine scent.

When I moved it, back a number of uncountable months, it proved to be a bit obstinate. It clearly didn’t want to move as it scratched my arms something rotten. It does have quite solid and massive thorns.

Maybe there’s some excuse for such behaviour when I moved it. After all, it had been there for years, planted long before we moved in. Perhaps it was happy there and wasn’t keen on being forcefully evicted (I know how that feels). I remember it still managed to inflict a few pin pricks when I replanted it in the Nursery Bed.

However, I am hard pressed to find a reason for today’s attack.

All I was doing was clearing away weeds. You’d think the rose would be happy about this and not suddenly turn vengeful and inflict more pricks and scratches on my arms. It even grabbed my t-shirt at one point, holding me firm in order to jab me a few more times.

And, boy, was there a lot of weeds. The Nursery Bed, being close to the house, was nearly all weeds. It looked like a dandelion convention had been organised and participants had arrived from far and wide to hear all about how to annoy gardeners.

Still, I persevered, reaching further and further into the bed until you could see some dirt between the plants we actually want.

It was hot work but not as hot as the Hot Border. This, as well, was inundated with weeds. In particular, my nemesis, the dreaded bind weed. It had decided to curl itself throughout the big holly tree. Flowers had even started to bloom – not a good sign.

I spent a goodly while unfurling the nasty strands until I had enough to put in a bag and poison them – dog poo bags are particularly good for this though they do look a bit odd hanging on the tree.

In between my weedage duties, I had a visit from Mr Granite. He is a big Italian chap (so big he looked about 12 months pregnant) who works for the people who are going to be making our kitchen work tops.

Last week, Lee the Kitchen Fitter made a whole load of templates which Mr Granite further annotated before taking them to be made into beautiful kitchen surfaces.

Without the templates

I should add that he styled himself Mr Granite and it’s not me being facetious.

Meanwhile upstairs, the floor guy completed the floorboards with the lip and end at the top of the stairs. The finished job looks lovely. Now, if the rooms just had skirting boards, I could start moving furniture around a bit…

The decorators were busy repapering the walls in preparation for painting. Apparently, when the house was built, the builders would rough plaster then dress it with a plain paper before painting over the top of it. The original paper had bubbled and split (not unusual after so many years and numerous coats of paint) so, in order to make the whole house look like new, it had to replaced. It looks a lot nicer when not red. Even with the ladder on the stairs.

Clive put the threshold drain in that runs along the outside bottom of the big doors. This is to collect any rain that hits the doors. It flows away, into the run off that was made so many months ago. He didn’t have a helper today so he had to mix his own cement. Poor Clive.

We also had another visit from Paul the Brickie. I showed him some of the photos I’d taken over the months and he was surprised that it had been almost six months ago that he started gouging the ground with the little digger.

While the morning started off a bit grim and damp, the weather improved until we had bright sunshine and blue skies. It lessened the humidity but increased the heat somewhat.

Meanwhile, in London, Mirnda had some awful news. One of her directors has decided to leave for another job. This came as a complete shock and has left her in somewhat dire straits. The college depends on the directors and it couldn’t have come at a worse time, leaving them all in the lurch.