"Water the plants.."

...I said, and it was at once a request born of desperation and a necessity. Desperation because the day was far spent and I had not a single photograph to show for it, and necessity because there has been no rain at all for a week and my new bedding plants in their lovely soft, uncompressed soil were in danger of dying before they'd finished a season.

But it also seems appropriate to have this horticultural reference this evening, as I spent the afternoon in the garden - apart from the 45 minutes when we took the Flymo that had just expired in my hands to the tip and bought a new lawnmower to complete the job I'd begun. However, putting it all together seemed a task too far this afternoon, so in the end we bunged it in the shed for another day and phoned the gardener. I spent the rest of the afternoon hoeing and weeding and hauling out long grass from places it didn't oughter be.