Smokingboot

So I cleaned the kitchen, and tidied the front room, and wrote a little, and mowed the grass in the back garden. I planted some foxgloves and some bluebells, and a bush of bright white ox-eye daisies. Another will join it tomorrow.

In the front room, the table is decked out in white and green. A glass jug painted with white star-like flowers and green stems is full of clean water, on a lily pad place mat at the centre of the table. Behind it is a photo he took of a stone Pan, I decorated the frame with a tiny daffodil head, some thyme, some rosemary with its flowers - this is the first year in three my rosemary has flowered. Next to that is a small chunk of stone he brought me from Asia Minor. He labelled it for me: Altar Fragment Temple of Aphrodite 534 BC.

There's a photo of a tiger on one side, of a wolf on the other. Another jug sits nearby, this time full of dark green stems like reeds, white flowers and deep blue irises beginning to open. It has a painted fern on it, and a wee frog with bulging eyes staring up at the stems. It makes me laugh.

larians very kindly sat up with me last night and we toasted my old friend Rick, with champagne and rasberries and grapes, good bread and cheese, sausage sandwiches and chicken wings and an eclair. He was a lover of the good things, a lover of life itself.

I am not sad, though I am eating too much. But I want the house to be clean and full of flowers and fresh herbs, clear water, life. I want to work in the garden before I get my nails done tomorrow, and I have work type work to do as well; can't avoid it. Plus my writing.

I'm weary, but the house begins to look better than it has for a while.