Monday Has a Chill and a Point to Make

Monday arrived at five point four degrees feels-like, which is the universe’s way of saying you’re awake now, aren’t you.

I was. The actual thermometer said eight point three, which is respectable for mid-May, and I want to be clear that I am not complaining. Seven point two at the low overnight — warmer than yesterday’s low by a full degree — and the frost stayed away for another night. But five point four feels-like is what happens when a thirteen-kilometre-an-hour wind decides to blow straight up from the south and remind you that autumn is not a suggestion, it is a fact. I opened the round door and the wind came in uninvited, the way wind does, and I stood there in my dressing gown for approximately four seconds before retreating to put the kettle on.

The kettle is the correct first response to most things. Frost, wind, existential uncertainty, Mondays. Especially Mondays.

Clear sky. Again. I have now lost track of how many consecutive clear days this makes, and I’ve stopped pretending I’m not slightly unnerved by it. The Shire does not do extended fine weather. The Shire does one nice day, then two grey ones, then a morning of drizzle that isn’t quite rain but isn’t quite not-rain, and then maybe — maybe — another nice day. This unbroken run of blue sky is gorgeous and suspicious in equal measure, like finding money on the ground. You pick it up, but you look around.

Zero millimetres of rain. The humidity is eighty-seven percent, which means the air is full of water it refuses to release. The clouds are somewhere else entirely, hoarding moisture over someone else’s garden, and my soil is developing what I can only describe as texture. Not quite cracked. Not quite dusty. But heading in that direction with the quiet determination of something that has made up its mind. I watered the raised beds this morning, properly, with the big can, and the soil drank it the way a thirsty hobbit drinks their first ale — quickly, gratefully, and with an expression that says more, please.

Sunrise at seven thirteen. Sunset at seventeen fourteen. Nine hours and — let me do the arithmetic — ten hours and one minute of daylight. Two minutes fewer than yesterday. The book continues to close, page by slow page. I don’t mind it. Shorter days mean longer evenings, and longer evenings mean more time by the fire with a book and a biscuit, which is not a loss but a trade, and a fair one.

I staked the broad beans.

I am going to say that again, because it deserves saying twice: I staked the broad beans. Yesterday I told them “not today” and they leaned further in response, which I took as a challenge. This morning I woke up and saw them from the kitchen window, listing at an angle that was no longer charming but structural, and I thought: today. Today is the day.

It took the better part of an hour. Finding the stakes — which were in the shed, behind the thing, under the other thing, next to a jar of screws I don’t remember acquiring. Cutting the string. Driving the stakes in, which the dry soil made harder than it should have been. Looping the string at the right height, tight enough to support but loose enough not to strangle. Broad beans are not grateful plants. They don’t straighten up and say thank you. They continue leaning, just now against something, which is the broad bean version of cooperation.

But it’s done. They’re staked. And standing there afterwards, brushing soil off my knees, looking at the neat row of stakes and string, I felt the particular satisfaction that comes from doing a small job properly. Not a great achievement. Not something anyone will notice or applaud. Just a task that needed doing, done on the day it needed doing, with string and stakes and a hobbit who got out of bed on a Monday and chose usefulness.

The garlic, as ever, offered no commentary. I visited it anyway. It has grown — fractionally, invisibly, in the way garlic grows, which is to say on its own schedule and by its own secret methods. I suspect garlic grows only when no one is watching, like a cat that won’t play when you’re in the room. I’ve considered setting up a chair and simply staring at a bulb to test this theory, but I worry that would cross a line from attentive gardener into person the neighbours talk about.

The south wind stayed all day. Not aggressive — thirteen kilometres an hour is conversational, not confrontational — but persistent. It came up through the valley and across the garden and straight through my jumper as if the jumper were merely decorative. I did my outdoor work in the morning when the sun was highest and the temperature peaked at sixteen point one, which in direct sunlight and out of the wind felt almost — almost — pleasant. By mid-afternoon the warmth had gone from the air the way warmth does in May, quietly, without announcement, and I was back inside by three with the fire lit and no regrets.

Monday has a reputation it doesn’t entirely deserve. People treat it like the villain of the week, the day that interrupts the weekend’s peace. But I think Monday is just honest. It says: here is a new week. What are you going to do with it? And today I staked the beans and watered the beds and drank three cups of tea and watched the clear sky do its suspicious clear-sky thing, and by evening I had the fire going and a bowl of soup and the kind of quiet that only comes after a day where your hands did useful work.

The UV index peaked at three point four, which is low enough to be ignorable but high enough to be noted. I did not need a hat. I wore one anyway, because the hat was there and my head was there and sometimes you don’t need a reason.

Tomorrow the sky will probably be clear again, because that appears to be the new arrangement, and I will water the beds again, because that is the consequence of the arrangement, and the broad beans will lean against their stakes, and the garlic will do whatever garlic does when it thinks no one is paying attention.

A good Monday. A useful Monday. The kind you don’t mind having.