Ground Rush

Director Tom C and Lizzie fine-tune the set furniture prior to
a rehearsal. 

With the big Dress Rehearsal only a week away now, the village play team are starting to experience that parachutist's scary moment when you seem to have been drifting down to land very slowly but suddenly, in the last few feet, the landing moment starts to rush at you with terrifying acceleration. The actors and supporters have had this play (Cupid Wore Skirts) in the cross wires since the end of last year but suddenly there are only 7 nights till Dress Rehearsal and just over the week to First Night.

The action takes place in the home of an
antique dealer. All manner of weird 'pieces'
owned locally have been volunteered as
stage furniture. 

The tension is mounting, the set has now been beautifully constructed by the 'lads' who work at Liz's place, props and furniture are accumulating and the Players are racing to finish learning lines and stage directions. Director Tom C is hanging in there, convinced that the show will go on - they will be ready on the opening night. He has, though slotted some extra rehearsals into what was once a Tuesday and Thursdays schedule; there is one tonight for example. I went yesterday to see one such, and I am very excited about the real thing - they have a lovely piece there and I am sure they will deliver it really well.

Damson blossom

If you saw last year's "A Wake in the West" you will not be disappointed. This is slightly different - in the 'Wake' humour came in great, hilarious bursts, with more serious sections in between, 'Cupid' is funny in a lighter way but throughout. I am really looking forward to it. I got involved today helping shift the set and all the furniture and props from the back-hall of the centre (where the pictures above were taken) into the main hall and onto the newly built proper stage, where it could now be rebuilt once the Montessori pre-school had broken up for Easter.

Tulips in hotter colours. 

Also accelerating (more comfortably!) is Spring, which seems to have leapt forward in the warm weather while I was in UK for just 4 nights. Quite by accident, we have selected daffs and tulips so that all the early risers are in quite bland colours - yellow daffs, maybe, but also pale yellow and white daffs and tulips. Just as I was beginning to get frustrated by the lack of 'fire' in the spring garden, 2 huge tubs of tulips by the front door prove to be yellow streaked with bright red. When I went away, only one plum was in blossom in the orchard - I have come back to damson, pear (both white) and the start of pink apple buds showing colour.

A nice enough hellebore but I yearn for darker reds and purples

Elsewhere we have anenomes, hellebores and pulmonaria in flower as well as bud break in most shrubs and trees promising more to come. I love the horse chestnut buds which we used to call "sticky buds" as kids - they have gone from just starting to elongate last Friday, to 3 inch shoots with visible leaves and stems now.

With the snowdrops finished (foreground)
a pass of the mower tidies up our front bank

The grass is starting to 'motor' and I have been out with the mower, picking my way between the leafy left-overs of snow drop and crocus - gardeners know that you need to leave the leaves for at least 6 weeks to produce food for next year's bulbs. On the local farms this translates into it being time to scatter fertilizer on the grass prior to letting the cattle out.

Anenome

This is normally an NPK formulation in tiny round pellets - a friend down the road chooses, for some reason, to have his delivered in 50 kg sacks which he can't lift and his contractor/tractor driver struggles with due to a bad back. I get called in each time to help him '2-hand' the sacks up into the hopper on the back of the tractor - it is quite high so if we are lucky, the delivery pallet is set down on a stack of 5-6 empty pallets so that we can pass at least the first few bags DOWN into the spreader.

No ground rush for the wooly lawn mowers. They are taking
their own sweet time about giving us a clue to their in-lamb,
or not, status.

I will leave it at that for this post - a nice gentle one after the rather hectic pace of recent epistles. I have a rather nice whiskey here, bought in case of the visitors last week needing a dram but not actually touched at the time. It is sliding down rather well.

Pear blossom.

Sticky buds (Horse Chestnut) explode
into action.

Sláinte !