O wall O wall O sweet and lovely wall
We have finished painting the blasted wall. It is now a comely shade of a slightly creamy white from End to End. Despite various grown up this and thats - at one point I was standing on one leg frantically painting as far as poss without moving my feet while the Professor, on the lawn , hauled upon a rope encircling a 10 ft viburnum - all has been painted, not too much in the way of upcoming lilies and so forth has been crushed underfoot, and while I have been scratched to blazes and got my hair full of paint, there’s nothing won’t heal. It’s really looking quite acceptable. The animals refrained from getting covered in paint today, which was good too. Possibly because it was nice and sunny and they were very content to bask on the lawn. The pair of them have become rather sweetly companionable — they don’t associate much in the house, but when we’re all outside, they seem to like to sit together. I have finally started taking things out of the greenhouse: this has been a ludicrously late spring. Half the beech isn’t in leaf yet, let alone the ash trees. The Professor had a hankering for morning glories, which I am happy to say are coming up good style in the propagator, and will soon need to be potted on. Soon we will be v v bold and bring out the orange trees, but even now I am not convinced we have had our last night frost of the so called spring. One rose I keep in the greenhouse, Pashley Manor, has begun to flower - a most extraordinary colour, the palest milky cocoa, strange but lovely. Given that the latest of the narcissi are still on the go, I can’t blame the outside roses for still thinking about it, even the one called Maigold which in this climate tends to be Junegold at the best of times.