Creak

We have spent much of the day undercoating trellis fences. A perfectly hideous job. You look at treillage and say to yourself, ‘there’s hardly anything to it’, then forget that each bit of wood has four sides till you’re in there with a brush. This has been an absolutely obnoxious task, because, while Britain is theoretically ‘basking for the Bank Holiday’, in practice, hereabouts it has continued decidedly overcast. And, even if the sun shone once in a while, though if the wind ever died down, it was warm, since in actual fact, it blew almost without intermission, after a while it began to feel as if it was gradually removing the top layer of one’s skin. Still, the job had to be done, and for the most part, it has been done. We have used all available paint and covered, I think, just about all of the exposed wood. Surviving paint from the previous coat may have to do otherwise, unless we can scare up any more. It’s all given a degree of urgency by a strong sense of this being somewhere on the verge of the last minute; this alternating sun and rain is getting the plant life moving at last, and we need to slap paint on before it becomes impossible to get at the trellis. Then, once everyone’s great feet are out of the border, I will start trying to hack away at the weeds. What a joy that will be.