Busy few days with added coincidence

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Been a busy few days, what with one thing and another.

Thought it was about time I dug up the last bed, under the lounge windows. I was going to be painting that wall soon-ish, and needed the ground cleared so I could get at as much of the wall as possible.

Most of the bed is being used for stacking pots and trays that I need handy for repotting or can’t find space for anywhere else, but there was a small rose that I’d inherited from the previous tenant, and a few grape hyacinth at the end of the bed nearest the step.

I didn’t take any pics of the bed as a whole, but I found it in the periphery of another pic, which I cropped – I put a mini-obelisk over the rose to mark the position so I didn’t cover it or step back on it – it seems to be in flower, but that’s the decorations on the hooks behind it.

I also wanted to get out the grape hyacinth bulbs – there’d been a few in flower at the inner, step-side end, but not many; I wanted them, like the rose, to be somewhere I could see ‘em better.

So I started digging up and sieving the dirt. I was rather surprised to find dozens of bulbs; hadn’t noticed that many flowering! but I had enough to plant three troughs (maybe overplant, as I did squeeze them in, rather) – the third trough also has the Tête-à-Tête narcissi that I’d bought in a very small pot earlier this year.

That took two days; at the end of which I was able to firm the dirt (with a bit of wood and a heavy foot!) and then could put the planters back. I’m so used to having tables to raise the plants that these looked sadly out of place.

Thought, I need something to lift them, but didn’t think that propping them up on stacked pots would do much good – besides, I’d need a lot of the larger pots for the upcoming repotting session, and didn’t fancy constantly moving the troughs to get at the pots under them.

I thought I’d done enough for one go – apart from all this, I’d painted half the wall behind the back door – and it was getting late, so “sufficient unto the day” etc. Went out to get some milk (overdue for a cuppa!); took a bag of rubbish out while I was going out anyway: saw something by the bins, looked closer, and saw a couple of benches, with a sign on them:

Got the milk, hoping that the benches would still be there when I got back. They were; went in, got my mega-trolley, and lugged ‘em back. Left them overnight, it was getting dark by now and it was quite an effort to get them home; they’re fairly chunky and I’d done a quite a bit of physical stuff that day already.

Next morning I scrubbed them all over and left them to dry, hoping it wouldn’t rain. Next morning I was out there about nine am! I didn’t really feel like it, but the day was already quite warm and I wanted to give them as much drying time as possible. I hoisted them to my work table, upside down, and varnished them – thought they were worth weatherproofing as much as I could, As the feet were going to be on the ground I wanted to make sure I covered them thoroughly. Left them to dry overnight, then turned them over, varnished the tops, left them to dry again …

(there’s a bit of added texture on the tops, thanks to the fragments of blossom from the trees in the green) – moved the planters out of the way so that I could paint that bit of wall – broke off the behind-door wall for this purpose, no point putting the benches and planters down if I’d have to move them again the next day:

… and finally got the benches into place (the paint was still a bit tacky, but I thought it wouldn’t matter if the benches were glued to the wall) …

… and put the planters on them.

I still can’t quite get over the coincidence: the very day that I find that I need something to lift the planters above ground level, there’s two benches left for someone to recycle. If I’d seen them a week before, I’d have grabbed them on the “come in handy for something” principle. A week later and I’d have grabbed them to go where they are now. But for it to happen on the very same day …

Of course, they could have been there for days before I saw them, but I doubt it; useful things left there don’t tend to hang around for long.

• 29 May, 2012
• 7 likes

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