While Jackie worked on cold frames this morning, I swept and raked up more leaves.
In England it is now compulsory to provide an inventory of those items to be included in the sale of a house. This prevents sellers from surprising purchasers by removing such as light bulbs, door handles, and other removable fittings before occupation; and makes clear what can be expected to be included. One item written into our contract was: ‘Greenhouse, unassembled’. We thought we might find visible, neatly stacked glass sections heaped up somewhere in the garden. We didn’t. But as we gradually cleared the undergrowth in the back drive we unearthed, partly buried and broken, polycarbonate panels littered about. Maybe that was the greenhouse.
Our head gardener has nurtured many plants in pots and window boxes that can survive cold weather but would perish in frost. She has therefore set about building her protective 
frames from these sections, from shelving removed from the garage, from large window boxes, and from the bath found at the end of the kitchen garden.
As I used big hands to pick up the leaves, I speculated about whether they would have been helpful in retrieving the 5p piece I dropped yesterday. Probably not. It was more likely that I would have found it as difficult as had the young man on the escalator in July last year.
The nasturtiums in the photograph above should, by now, have been blackened by frost. Just by my left shoulder can be be seen a camellia which has had the rashness to bloom in December, at a time when the cold frames are being deployed to protect smaller plants. It has been suggested that we should cover these wonderful shrubs with some kind of sheeting in order to offer them similar protection. Perhaps that is worth exploring.
In order to represent this flower, I further explored my camera settings. The first facility offers vivid colours, the second to get the best out of portraits, and the third to enable me to adjust the colours myself. This flower is of a delicately striated pink. Which version is preferable?
Within a five or six mile radius of our home there is a surfeit of Chinese takeaways but none where we can sit down to it. It fell upon one in Pennington to provide us with our dinner this evening. Different from the other two we use, it was equally as good. Jackie, who went to collect it, did not register the name. Given that I would wish to convey it to my readers across the world, some might consider this rather remiss. She is, however, so perfect in every other respect, that I think I’ll keep her on a little longer. I finished the Cotes du Rhone and Jackie drank the last of the Pedro Jimenez.