A virtuoso gardener?

 Hanging off the Driveway tree.
Rambling Rose

It's hot again, but the wind is awful - noisy and swirly, not nice to be out in. I've made a huge promise to my garden that I can't keep. So much for being a virtuoso gardener (that's sort of what I'd promised). So much for this Christmas week's BIG PLAN.

Leading on from this, Albeniz' piano piece called Jerez is causing me great difficulties. I can hear it inside my head, but I can't connect what I'm seeing in the score into my physical fingers. In a relatively happy state of semi-despair (?) I've just asked Ms Google the million dollar question : Is Albeniz' Jerez a virtuoso piano piece?

Absolutely! Albeniz himself was a virtuoso pianist, and he wrote the Suite Iberia (of which Jerez is my most favourite) for a virtuoso pianist. Which I am definitely not. So Jerez is doubly virtuosic.

Difficulty explained. It's not just me being a bit of a thickie. Phew! We won't even think about gardening - it's far too hot and windy.

 Duck chaser!
Pebbles the Dog

The dogs and I have been around the orchard lots of times - one very lucky mallard duck escaped the jaws of Pebbles by a tail feather. So Pebbles slipped through next-door's fence in hot pursuit, while I roared and bellowed. Dogs that don't listen are VERY ANNOYING. And dogs that try and kill ducks are just GROSS. That's you, Pebbles.

Wednesday 22nd December

The third hot day in a row. Last week it was too rainy to garden, this week it's too hot. Hopeless! But not too hot to tackle Albeniz. I reckon I've got a virtuoso musical brain, if nothing else. First I'm off to collect and dump some loads of weedy rubbish. Before it gets even hotter. Will take some photographs of roses.

 Having a stretch.
Minimus

Later...

No gardening. Sat on Pond Cottage's verandah and read a book on Private Gardens (where paid garden designers have clients who seem to all want spaces for outdoor entertaining). After reading all the pretty stories I looked around.

Dappled shade, a sparkling pond, gnomes fishing by the water lilies, well-watered Canna lilies in pots on the decking, Pond Paddock green and leafy, filled with beautiful trees. The birds chirped and Minimus the cat rolling in the dusty path.

Oh yes. I think I'm much, much more imaginative than all those clients in the book (for example, nobody wanted a pond for their gnomes). And cats and dogs are easy to entertain outside, requiring nothing of a designer nature. Perhaps just a pond to swim in (and not get told off for wrecking the marginals.

I hope...

I hope it's cooler tomorrow. I really have to get up to speed. Albeniz and the garden.