Tuesday, 9 April 2024
at home
We had had some rain overnight and in the morning, which then stopped. Thus I had to abandon my plan to read all day.
I returned to compost bin two, roughly sifting the lower portion, which I had left like this a couple of days ago….
..and got to the bottom!
I applied it to the area where I’d done the difficult weeding of pasture grass, horsetail, creeping buttercup and, at the back, an annoying running grass with fine roots (but not couch grass).
When I started on it a few days back, it looked like this from the back, looking west:
And now it looks like this.
The weeds are still lurking but will easier to pull, as they reappear, now that the soil is fluffy. Here it is from the front, looking east:
And a couple of evening photos of the garden aglow:
Actinidia kolimikta, supposed to be variegated with white and pink splashes but is pretty much green:
reading
Yesterday evening, I started a novel by the Swedish author of A Man Called Ove. I was drawn in to the story by the truth of the very first paragraphs: “…it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is…..
….…Because there’s such an unbelievable amount that we’re all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You’re supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you’re supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi. Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks.“
Tonight, I finished the book. I surely identified with how one of the characters felt about being retired. “Roger had always been an important, respected man at work, and even his bosses had listened to him there. Retirement wasn’t something that Roger entered into voluntarily, it was something that had suddenly afflicted him. The first few months he would drive past the office, sometimes several times a day, because he was hoping to see some sign that the people inside couldn’t cope without him. He never saw one. He wasn’t at all difficult to replace, so he went home and the business carried on existing. That realization was a great burden to Roger, and made him slower.“
Except….when we run errands, like to our accountant’s office, nice people ask me if I miss working for Long Beach. I automatically reply, “Yes, a little, some things…” but when I really examine this, I don’t think I miss it one little bit. I think of the newly dark-painted buildings, the new three story buildings, and the lack of a cheerful carousel, and the tensions of it being a fraught election year, and I am usually 100% glad to be done with it. I suppose I miss being “important”(-ish) though.
There was a short while near the middle of Anxious People where I got impatient, and then a surprising plot shift got me involved again and I completely enjoyed the rest (although I do think the author is more optimistic about human nature than I am). I think it would be cheering to read all the rest of his novels.
Love seeing your garden aglow in the evening light. Beautiful!
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