Thanks to Cat Fereday for part two of her fun blogs on 'A year in the life of a gardeners wife'
And so, we range into the summer season, leaving the broken tools and microwave meal disasters of Spring behind us....
In West Yorkshire, Summer is know as the "Hide and Seek" season - one moment its here, the next its gone. We range from indefatigable heat wave to monsoon season to grey and undecided (John Major weather). For me, as a gardener's wife, the onset of Summer represents a return to normality after the spousal gridlock of Spring.
As the weather alternates between too hot or too wet, Fereday is occasionally driven indoors to focus his energies on the household. Which is a real relief as its gone to rack and ruin under my stewardship - and also frees me up to read Madonna's brother's book while revelling in Amy Winehouse's rasping lyrics (inside every Catholic school girl afflicted by a love of pastry, there's a skinny demented Barbie doll a la Winehouse screaming to get out).
The first hot day of the Summer sees Fereday cleaning the cellar to within an inch of its life... and the lives of the host of eight-legged denizens of the same. Its always cool down there. Usually, I'm not home for this event, but this year I was and the screams emanating from the cellar as Fereday faced the creepy crawlers were truly Hammer Horror class. My duties at this juncture are limited to standing at the top of the cellar steps with a cold glass of Sauvignon to calm his nerves (note, these are HIS nerves that need calming, not mine). While resting a tomato top (very spider like) on the underside of the glass is tempting - trust me... he'll jump backwards and end up falling down the cellar steps!
The first day of monsoon season in Yorkshire normally sees Fereday conducting the ritual "root and branch reform" of the kitchen cupboards. This isn't an easy feat in a kitchen as small as ours... to illustrate just how tiny it is, the agent described it as a "charming galley kitchen offering a bijou culinary experience...." You've got it - its of "cupboard under the stairs" proportions. Essentially, we have two bottom cupboards, which basically gives him little choice. I'm resigned to coming home to find the pots and pans swapped with the Pyrex and casserole dishes, and the whole spectacle refreshed by the presence of new kitchen roll lining each shelf. (I've never quite understood why kitchen roll designers seem to be permanently locked in the 70's or Disneyland.) Thankfully, its not really my domain, so I just nod and smile.
The rest of the Summer just goes on in the same routine until Autumn begins, with the arrival of the first roast chicken dinner of the season. I've tried to get him to move his household routine upwards to the attic, in a vain attempt to get him to work his Summer energy off on tidying the other parts of the house that have gone to pot since Spring.
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