Kitchen Hygiene

30/6/22, A Thursday.
Yesterday’s forecast suggested ‘light rain’ but the clouds clearly had not paid that much attention. Yesterday’s washing is sagging on the line, dripping like it's been dropped in a pond.
We did not check the weather this morning; we drank our coffee, listened to the birds shrill, and lest this sound too much of a rural idyll, also scrolled our phones for emails and social media whatevers. We speak to each other too, Mr and I.
This morning’s chat ruled out repurposing old carpets for suppressing weeds on the bare-earth areas on our land, due to possible contamination of the soil and transportation cost. We chose terram, a geotextile fabric, instead, which we will buy new but be able to reuse.
We tog up for a land trip (which for me includes flower earrings, a pretty hair tie, maybe a polka-dot scarf; this is part of my fun-on-the-land policy, which in turn is part of preventing burnout), taking a tape measure to check how much terram to purchase.
At the land, we trek over the squared flat dirt, trailing the tape. Old Dog follows, attempting a bounce through the long grass before sitting down, tongue slung out, looking like she’s amused by her efforts.
She follows us back to the stable, as witnessed by our new CCTV anti-theft, once-bitten-twice-aware-of-the-budget, security installation. (I have a plan to learn necromancy and install a demon instead but these things take time.) She is hot, so we put Old Dog in a shady spot on her cool mat before we take a tour of the lower fence where our wildflowers are opening up. We find a few we don’t recognise, so we take photos for ID- a tall yellow, multi-floreted thing, a purple thing, a pale pink, and one from the snapdragon family.
There is feathery tansy-leaved physalis, chunky borage, three colours of sweetpeas; marble white, amethyst purple, carnelian red; yellow trumpets of evening primrose, spires of salvia with its busy bee visitors.

There’s dog rose and blackberries with lookalike flowers, white and pale pink in the green jumble. Mugwort buds are in evidence, soft and padded- the wind stirs up foliage, showing the silver underleaf, the stems that are candy-striped, stippled with stiff hairs. The weeping willow, munched by deer and rabbits, is in a protective cage and leaping back to life.

Meadow vetchling sprawls everywhere with its yellow bobbles, and there’s purple vetch too- the yellow alas does not taste good but the purple is pea flavoured, we munch it up.  All the heathers and roses and fruit trees that we planted are slowly taking shape and holding their places in the tall grass and the creeping brambles and the blackthorn shoots.We walk back to the stable, let Old Dog wander out before the journey home: we all need a wee.
It only occurs to me, as Old Dog hobbles behind the stable, that none of us choose to relieve our bladders next to the stable anymore. This area is earmarked for an outdoor kitchen. It has a post to mark the boundary but no other physical sign. In our minds it is built, so we take ourselves elsewhere, and do not urinate in the imagined kitchen.
I don’t know why this strikes me as so funny. I laugh persistently, regardless.

Pictured above: current bathroom