DERVISH DAY

If you had driven by the house today on your way up or down the mountain and glanced out of your window as you passed you would perhaps have seen what appeared to be a darkly clad dervish blurring hither and yon in the garden and other environs of said house, bearing various tools and watering the landscape with perspiration. That would be me.

I was completely blurry today because this is the first non-rainy day in a week and my last off-day before I wing it to the US. I work Thursday and Friday in the Big City, then on Saturday I fly.

As a total blur, at last doing all the normally 3 or 4 days' worth of stuff I have to do before I leave, I chainsawed three large oak logs into 2 meter pieces and stacked them, prepped several garden beds and planted all the local Japanese tomato plants Kaya planted as seeds when she was here last (she HAS to see those when she visits in August), then planted purple, pale purple and yellow Echinacea; sweet basil, Genoese basil, lime basil, spicy globe basil and lemongrass; weeded the ginger and oregano; harvested the last of the lettuce, discovered that invisible monkeys had got at my biggest Roma tomatoes (and not enjoyed them because they were green ha ha), then I top-covered all the firewood with greenhouse plastic, rocked down to withstand any hurricanes that might pass by in my absence. I also put up the window screens.

I cleared the raingutters and roof channels during the heart of Monday's downpour, so that's one thing I didn't have to do today, which made it possible to finish before midnight. Every single other thing I did. I think. I'm sure I'll remember something crucial in the skies over Catalina Island.

Now to shower, chew dinner with the few muscles I have left that still seem to work, then dissolve into a fleshy puddle that emits large balloon-like orange Zs that float to the ceiling.