Saturday 4th December 2010
Today the only mild day promised for weeks, so had to hurl into the garden and get the tulips in.
Hence delay in blog.
Even so defeated by pots still frozen.
Also Miroslav here re-newing the silicone filler in my shower, touching up paint work etc – those 500 or so small jobs always outstanding in any Poor Little Rich Gay home, a mountain which not even 8 full-time staff could erode.
And life piling up and up – my renewed intense involvement with Lord Arrowby which includes never seeing him from one month to the next (so much to say), then opera and the Photo Multi nearly falling out of the box, then the agony of rummaging through one hundred and twenty-three Paris hotel websites – we board for the Monet exhibition in January. Robert Nevil has refused this earth-shattering, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But one ticket remains for 7 in the morning of 22nd January, in Paris, at the Grand Palais.
This year my tulips:
The Front Area: 20 each of Apricot Beauty (apricot), Princess Irene (fabulous ocre/gold with buff and purple streaks) and Coleur Cardinal (solemn religious red)
The Back Garden: 20 each of Texas Gold (a yellow parrot), Professor Roentgen (an orange parrot), Flamenco (a yellow fringed with red stripe, substitute for Flaming Parrot, not available) and Honeymoon (a white fringed, substitute for Spring Green, not available)
Top Terrace (which does have a view of the Shard after all. I was looking in the wrong direction for months): 20 each of blackcurrant ripple parrot (blackcurrant and white), Bleu Aimable (blue) and Spring Green (off-white with green stripe)
That’s 200 tulips: not cheap, I’m afraid, but essential.
I am impressed. Solange planted ours weeks ago. They have been nesting in the warm earth for quite some time. As ever, her mid-term dementia is playing up and so she cannot name varieties. I hope they will co-ordinate with my jewels. She is very excited about the re-appearance of Arrowby. Perhaps this is why she cannot name the flowers…
I begin to get an idea of Solange. I had always imagined her as a foolish young thing, who might once have seen Carmen. Now she appears more maternal.