Over the last few months we’ve all just about come to terms with this damn pandemic and our reactions have changed from the initial blind panic to today some kind of acceptance, even boredom with it. Along the way the pace of life has slowed until now, when in past years Rosie and I would have been at our very busiest period of garden openings and every minute of every day would have been spent weeding, mowing, trimming, deadheading, cake making we are now struggling to find the incentive to do things. Not that there aren’t things to do, the same things, but the necessity to do them has disappeared. So we just do this and that, and muddle through the days.
Such torpitude explains why this weekly musing is several days later than it should be though only the most loyal reader will realise (or care). Instead I’ve been loitering around the garden a bit more than usual, watching the birds nicking the wild cherries and especially enjoying the quite sensational smells: the roses, the sweet peas, the trachelospermum and the philadelphus, which combine to reassure us that it’s OK to just sit and enjoy the moment and not worry about the watering that needs to be done later.
Mind you, the incessant dry weather has stopped the grass growing and the weeds sprouting so that’s a couple of jobs that don’t need doing anyway. But I’d prefer rain to fall than the lawns turn crisp and brown and the plants and flowers flop to their death. Yesterday, when thunderstorms and torrential rain had fallen all over the country, here south of the Downs hardly a drop fell. We’re known as The Sunshine Coast and it’s no misnomer: the South Downs is a climatic barrier to the weather from the rest of Sussex and rain seldom falls on Westdean.
The trouble is this combination of languor and sluggishness is tinged with a guilt that I really should be doing something worthwhile. But what? That’s even more troubling.
