Buddleja Time
2 August

Our Buddleja is now something like nine foot tall and is swathed in white flowers.

Its presence is drawing many more bees, hoverflies and butterflies into the garden. According to the Butterfly book, it would appear that, among the many white butterflies, we have also been visited by a Peacock Butterfly which has red wings and four eyes embossed one on each of its wings.

Also, flowering away in the back garden are our geranium, two begonias, the nasturtiums, the rudbeckia, the African Daisies, the honeysuckle and the morning glories. In the front garden, the show is completed by the fuchsia, the nemesia, the cottage pinks and various bulbs which include fresias and dwarf lilies.

Ross has been away this week. Down in Cornwall with his folks. I could have done many things with my time. There are many things that need to be done round the house. So, I mainly read.

I read Tommy's Tale by Alan Cumming which was good, a sort of louche growing up tale that basically said that if you follow the promptings of your heart then everything will work out fine. I liked that as an idea. It was also camp as tits and a very good laugh.

And I read Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea which was simply amazing. It was a murder mystery that kept me guessing to the end not only who the murderer was but also who would be murdered. It was a history of the effects of the Famines in Ireland in the nineteenth century and the consequent mass emigrations. It was a palimpsest of a nineteenth century novel comprised of varying testimonies in the Wilkie Collin's vein. It was a rattlingly good yarn. It was a treatise on how we know each other and how layers of impressions can be pealed away to reveal many different types of people according to the circumstances and to the facts revealed. It really was an excellent read.

There are only a couple of things that I like about Ross not being here at home. One of them is being able to throw the curtains open as I get up so that there is light in the bedroom. The other is being able to read in bed at night before I turn the light out to sleep. I don't know whether it has been that or the cedarwood scent I have been putting on my pillow but I have been sleeping very well this past week.

On Friday night, I was over at Wigan for dinner at Colin's. Brendan and Robert were there also. We did not exactly hear the chimes at midnight but it was an evening of quiet reminiscence between people who have known each other for some twenty years or so.

Ross returned on Sunday after I returned from Quaker meeting. Both Nutkin and I were pleased to see him and we eased very quickly back into the normal routine of things - washing, shopping, tidying, making plans for the house.

We picked beans from our garden and tonight I shall prepare a chicken salad which includes them.