Propurty

Julia showed up yesterday with two helpers and they slogged away at the garden for four hours. She says a lot of her customers have been shouting at her for neglecting them. I don't think we shouted exactly- but we were a little stern. A garden needs continuous attention- not the occasional blitz.

It's my mother's garden but she barely knows it's there. I enjoy it but I'd enjoy a field just as much. Or a wood. I like weeds; I like mystery plants. Talking of which, Julia identified the grassy stuff that's growing in one of our miscellaneous tubs as wheat- seeded by the birds who have been kicking about in a nearby feeder.

The people in the big house have it sussed. They spend very little time in residence- and so they've converted the old stables/garages into living accommodation for an elderly couple who serve as full-time caretaker and gardener. Feudalism isn't dead, but alive and flourishing in (semi)-rural Kent. What a thing it is to have money!

But then again, how odd to pour so much of it into property you barely use.

Oh, I know; the very rich have problems of their own- not all of them connected to wealth- though many of them are. Money is fun but the things you have to do to earn it very often aren't. You couldn't pay me to be a corporate lawyer.

The Cloister And The Hearth: Charles Reade

I love this book. Yes, it has flaws- but I'd rather call them quirks- and what novel of this scope and ambition is without them? It's enormous, it gives you a world, it has adventure, pathos, comedy, romance and ideas- and it's full of people you're happy to spend time with-  from a ribald Burgundian barmaid to a worldly-wise Renaissance Pope. 

And imagine my surprise and pleasure when Frodo Gerard  finally reaches Rome and there falls in with Fra Francesco Colonna- the renaissance polymath also known as Poliphilo, my namesake- and he turns out to be the most delightful person.