That Must Be Really Hard

This morning on my way back from Morrison's supermarket ( I'm trying to save money there - if you spend £40 three weeks running you get £10 off your next shop -  all the time I'm wandering along the isles looking in vain for organic stuff I'm wishing I was at Waitrose) I call in at the allotment and cut long arching branches of Buddleia to take to my parents' grave tomorrow. It's the 6th anniversary of my mother's death. My sister is bringing roses from her garden.On Saturday I bought a navy blue Agapanthus at the Sub-Tropical Garden's plant stall to remember my grandfather - her father -  who grew them in his garden in Knysna in South Africa.

Summer comes back this afternoon. While our gardener wedges a ladder in the overgrown border  next to the tall hedge between the houses and starts pruning it back with secateurs ( I won't let him use a hedge strimmer which would be much quicker - too noisy and brutal -  and would wake  my sleeping husband) I tackle the long mallow geranium border, which has finished flowering, with my own secateurs.

My husband doesn't like the small tortoise he made in his ceramics class this afternoon - says it's crap. Says he can't make things like he used to. I used to make suggestions like 

Could you ask for some help with it ? Or What could you do to make it better?

 Now I just say, That must be really hard.

And he says it is.

Then he goes back to bed and I start making supper - put four round beetroots in a pan to boil, slice up three young courgettes, cook them in coconut oil with translucent wafers of elephant garlic, steam green beans and shredded Russian kale, fry a red onion, chop sprigs of marjoram and oregano from the garden, swirl them into a lipped bowl of beaten eggs and make an omelette, finishing it under the grill, the grated Parmesan cheese bubbling and brown on top.

We eat it later, two bright gold corn-on-the-cob on the side, sitting in the garden with the sun reflecting off the white table top and a three quarter moon high in a blue sky - the blue of agapanthus.