Teasels and a Tearful Moment

Our teasels are blooming like crazy now. The purple ones come slightly earlier and they're pretty much done, but the white ones are at their peak. Don't they look like spacecraft when seen from the end like that? Like Apollo and Soyuz, about to dock in mid-flight.

The insects love them, both the hoverflies...

...and the bees. Look how dusty with pollen that bee is!

They are such durable, versatile plants, too. We even had a purple one grow up in the middle of the patio.

You can see it there, sticking out of a crack in the concrete to the left of our potted geraniums. I let it grow because I was so impressed with its determination, or whatever the unconscious plant equivalent of determination would be. Life force, I suppose.

I'm sitting at our new patio table now, in the almost chilly morning air. (It's 59º F, or 15º C, but will get to a perfect 72º F, or 22º C, by midday.) I sort of made myself stay home yesterday. I have to learn to live in this apartment again, how to be surrounded by all these haunted spaces. I can't just go out and wander around the city every day like a rootless nomad.

Plus I had some things to do here. I wanted to finish cleaning up some dead brush that I cut out of the trees at the back of the property on Friday. I filled a large yard waste bag with all the cuttings of ivy and cotoneaster and rambling roses. I realized as I cleaned it all up that I inadvertently cut some living roses as well, but it doesn't matter. Those things are tough as nails, and my mind was all over the place that morning. I was paying attention to the dog, not the plants.

I answered blog comments, and even sat on our back garden bench and read for a while. I missed the constant presence of Olga at my feet or sunbathing nearby, but I was able to do it. (It helps that the book I'm reading, "The Hotel Avocado" by Bob Mortimer, is funny and diverting and not too mentally challenging.)

I only cried three or four times, briefly. So I consider that progress.

I've found that it helps to maintain some routines, even if they were meant primarily for the dog. For example, I've been walking each morning after I blog, which is normally when I'd take Olga out. She'd snap to attention the minute I closed my computer and, when she was healthy, we'd take a lap around the high street or through the nearby housing estate, and it feels good to keep that up. (It's funny how quickly I can walk those routes by myself, without her sniffing every smell and shoving her nose in all the garbage bags.)

I still haven't put away her leash and collar, or her Kong toys, which are all sitting by the front door as if waiting for her. It feels too final.

Oh -- I want to tell one final Olga story from Friday, because I don't want to forget it. After the vet put her to sleep in the garden, someone from a pet crematorium came to collect her. He came with a basket, almost like a dog bed, and some blankets. We lifted her into the basket and the attendant positioned the blankets with her head out, as if she were sleeping (and it looked for all the world like she was). We then carried the basket down the garden steps and through the house out to the van waiting in the street. As we left the garden, we brushed past the Crocosmia "Lucifer," and it dropped about two dozen red blossoms all over her, littering the blankets with flowers. It was like the garden bidding her farewell. Even the attendant commented on how appropriate that was.

(I'm crying again. Oh well.)