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We've finally got round to tidying up our new garden and so today went to the garden centre to pick out some plants for the borders. Everyone got to choose something and we got a nice selection of lavender, herbs, vegetables and shrubs which will probably mostly die over the next few days.
There's a little railway at the garden centre that we last went on during one of the lockdowns, so four or five years ago. Some of the photos from that day come up on our kitchen Alexa, so although the train ride hasn't changed much, our kids have. They're still young enough to have enjoyed sitting on a tiny train, but maybe only just for Phoebe.
Later we'd get to put all our plants in the garden. I moved a pot with a slightly brittle bush in it and managed to get a little bit of something in my eye. It felt like some huge thorn had got stuck in the back of my eyeball and it hurt quite a bit. I couldn't open my eye for a while and no amount of rubbing, washing or spraying seemed to make any odds. I just accepted that a stabbing pain in my eye would just be another of the constant maladies that I have to carry with me, but after about three hours the pain just stopped. Either the bit of dry plant had found its way out the front or the back. Maybe it was burrowing into my brain. I found a tiny bit of something brown in the corner of my eye later. Was that it?
I am both surprised that an eye can be so very vulnerable and that it is eventually able to deal with something this abrasive. I refused all efforts to get me to go to an optician or A and E though. I trusted my body to sort this out on its own, just like with the cancer.
The garden looked great though, at least for now and if all goes well we'll have herbs, strawberries, carrots and sweetcorn to enjoy. I think least likely is sweetcorn, but let's see. The important thing is that we've attempting something ambitious as a family. We will either dine together or cry together. It feels like ages since all of us have spent the whole day together. I think this is going to be a fun summer.
Ernie has found the fox puppet I gave him a few years back (I think it was the original Law Fox before I then got one made up with a costume) and wanted it to come up with a bed time story for him. So Mr Brown Fox (as Ernie decided he was called) made up a story about a fox that had always wanted to go scuba diving but didn't get the opportunity as he lived in Berkshire. But one day he got in the back of a lorry and got to the seaside, where he managed to sneak into a divinc centre and borrow the equipment. But then when he tried to dive he realised how wet it was and didn't like it. "And the moral of the story" said Mr Brown Fox, "is to never have any ambitions or to try anything new."
"Is that a good moral?" I asked Ernie. Who didn't think it was,.
But Ernie read the fox a book called "Ten Green Bottoms" and was very keen to see if the Fox found it funny. Which the fox largely seemed to, because he is a very childish fox.
Ernie said his story was best. But his came out of a book, whilst the scuba diving one had been improvised so I don't think it was a fair comparison.
