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| The Californian Lilac |
I am keen to decorate our south wall with a few shrubs. Bronte's ashes are buried in the centre where I planted a memorial rose bush marked with a wooden cross. This is made from an ash tiller-extension from when I used to race dinghies sixty years ago. When it broke off, I always knew it would be useful, and I kept it in my clutter shed with much other junk until the need came. It was well varnished and has stood the weather well.
We used to have a lilac tree, but two years ago it died. I tried a couple of garden centres but they had none in stock, so I bought a laburnum and planted that out. I have tried to grow these several times, along with clematis and Jasmin, but in the back lawn they always shrivel quickly - I think the dogs enjoyed using them as lamp posts but they didn't welcome the strong urine as fertilizer, so this time I've planted the shrub in the enclosed side garden and hope it will thrive.
I have a rule for working now I'm frail - do a bit and rest a bit. Digging the hole for the laburnum I sat in the garden, casually throwing a rubber chew for the dog when I saw some familiar white blooms; it was the old lilac tree. It must have seeded somehow and spread to a new site further along the wall and now blossomed a greeting, young and fresh. It smelt wonderful and I hadn't even seen it till I sat down; this is a good life lesson - take plenty of rest and look around, you will be certain to see something new.
We had the cleaners in this morning. They comprise a Brazilian lady with no English, and her daughter who is translator and valued help We get them in once a month, now I am getting an attendance allowance, and they polish everything they can find. They say there is English cleaning, and then Brazilian cleaning. They even attempt to clean my office, though I've begged them to leave it, for nothing is in the same place when they finish. An example of their thoroughness and attention to detail is how they finish the toilet rolls; the bow they fashioned is like a smart towel in the end of the bed in a top hotel. They roll the towels and stack them in a tidy display; they even tie the bin liners with a neat bow to keep them in place, rather than draped down the side of the bin as I leave them. Thank goodness they only come once a month - their intensity would drive me from the house if they came more often.
With spare time, I have written a few published papers on cosmology over the last ten years. Last year, I wrote one that I sent to my old tutor, Professor Tom Shanks. He very graciously thought it was worth doing a poster for and, without cost to me, he had printed a large A0-sized poster for me and displayed it near his own poster at the annual Royal Astronomical Society meeting at Durham. He also gave a few criticisms and suggestions for the paper. If I concentrate for too long, my brain tires quickly these days, so I have nibbled away at it over many months to get it rewritten. But I have finally sent it off to the RAS to see if it has any chance of publication. Wish me luck - it is a paper offering an alternative to Dark Energy, which is bound to be very controversial so there will be a lot of vested interests opposing it.
