Clean Conservatory

Cleaned up the conservatory yesterday – about time. Meaning about time it’s warm enough to use it. Pentecost Sunday & spring is finally here in its delayed glory. Has been for a while but no time for the conservatory. 

I love that word – conservatory. In Danish it’s just called havestue – garden room – because that’s what it is, a glassed-in room that lets us enjoy the backyard a month extra at either end of summer. Conservatory sounds like a place for black coffee & profound musings on deep matters, when I just want a place to eat food that doesn’t blow off the plate & maybe a glass of wine. I could send Thoreau grateful thoughts as I gaze out onto our primeval – read: unkempt – garden, but that’s as conservatory as I get.

“Guess I didn’t clean up as much as I thought,” mumbled my absolutely better half as he gathered up his tool collection from all the repairs etc. he’s done in the conservatory since last fall. Guess not, but that’s just how it is with a conservatory in this climate. We feed the birds all winter from an ingenious feeder from World Wildlife Fund – an upside down 2 liter Coke bottle with a seed dispenser screwed onto the top. Empty birdseed bags floated over empty apple boxes & plastic flower pots that aren’t good for anything after I transplant what was in them, so why don’t I get rid of them? I will I will.

Filled the entire tank or drum or whatever you call the receptacle on a bagless vacuum cleaner/hoover, mainly with pine needles from last December. You should see it now. As a last detail today I hung a net bag with dried lavendar from last year. For a good week or 2, if I’m lucky, it really will look & smell like a conservatory. Then it will revert to havestue. Cheers everybody. Have a fun summer.