Week of
A plot of your own, finally
Four years on the waiting list, and the letter from the council comes with a plot number and a key deposit. Go and look on Monday, in boots, and do not decide anything. On Tuesday and Wednesday, read the rules and price a spade you will keep for life. By Friday the ground may have told you what it wants. Saturday is for digging the first bed, slowly, and planting your garlic and tulips while the soil still allows it.
Love
The old man on the next plot will have opinions about your soil, your spade and your shed, and you could do worse than listen. Take him a flask on Saturday. At home, whoever shares your table may picture more vegetables and fewer weekends; ask on Wednesday what they would like to grow, and give them one row that is entirely theirs, weeds included.
Work and money
An invoice of yours is thirty-eight days late, and you have been patient about it, which the client has noticed. On Tuesday, send one polite line giving the amount, the original date and the date you expect payment. Ring on Thursday if nothing has moved. You are owed this money; asking for it is bookkeeping, not bad manners.
Body and mind
Digging uses muscles that have spent the summer in a chair. Stop after an hour on Saturday, whatever the bed looks like, and change your grip often. Keep a thermos of soup in the bag; nothing tastes better eaten on an upturned crate. A hot bath on Saturday evening beats any amount of admiring the view.
Saturday, for the first bed dug and the garlic in the ground