something to look forward to

The tomato plants I put in pots rather later than intended this year seem to be growing reasonably well. They are tall and leafy, although bushier than they should be, as I missed a few side shoots.

We don’t have a lot of space and, as I said, it was a bit late before I got my act together to buy seedlings, so there are only three of them: one Gardener’s Delight and two others, which the ironmongress couldn’t remember the names of. I reckoned we could just call them Tom I and Tom II, as they weren’t likely to answer anyway.
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shades of summer

Everywhere you go in the UK at this time of year, there are geraniums and pelargoniums of all shades blooming in tubs and window boxes, in the middle of roundabouts and in other public spaces and gardens.

Most seem to be the sort with pom-pom cluster flowers like old-fashioned floral bathing caps.
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tiger tiger

Q. What’s black and white and red all over?
A. A sunburnt penguin.

or, possibly,

Yesterday’s newspaper.

I guess that that traditional gem becomes less and less appropriate as an answer as newspapers are now printed in colour, and, anyway, we tend to read them online as a never-ending rabbit hole of hyperlinks, not as a monochrome printed artefact.
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no more tulips

I recently wrote a couple of posts inspired by a bunch of tulips I had bought. I talked about the personality they reveal when they are picked and subjected to the constraints of a vase, and about the way they twist and writhe in a kind of dance of death.

Unsurprisingly, those flowers have now been discarded – even I can’t live with dead flowers on the kitchen table for very many days, however interesting the photos of decay may be – and I don’t suppose there will be any more tulips to be found at the supermarket until next Christmas.
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too early

I realised this morning that it’s been a long time since I went for a walk. That’s not to say I have been shut up indoors. Nor that I have been entirely sedentary: I may not complete my 10,000 steps each day, but I actually do walk quite a lot.

But taking the short-cut across the park in a rush to catch a train, racing off to the bus station, or scurrying round the supermarket in a lunch break don’t really count as going for a walk. Nor does tottering in high heels from the bus stop up the mile-long drive of a country hotel to attend a business meeting, however rural the setting and however much wildlife one sees en route. (I’ve noticed that many such hotels are on bus routes, though I’m pretty sure the guests don’t use pubic transport; I assume it’s so the staff can get there without them needing to be able to afford to run a car.)
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