To suddenly have such a lot of time on my hands was to say the least very disconcerting, and I missed the little Emil terribly. But at least I could get into my garden again, and only now realized how neglected it had became. But I soon got back into doing all the things that had to be done, but the bally grass that had taken over completely, made my guts drop into my shoes.
Emil still slept with me at this stage, as Jan had to take Andreas to the bus before seven, and as Berty only came in at eight, it would have been cruel to get the baby up and out at that ungodly hour, the temperatures still very low, even though summer was in full swing. Haarlem is a strange place, with the day and night temperatures differing about twenty degree celcius, as during the day the temperature could easily rise to forty, and then by six it could be about ten.
During this time a horde of spiders had hatched, and they were quite a nuisance, as Emile was very restless, and I could not blame him, as the little critters were crawling all over one, and boy, they could already give a decent bite at that young age. So, after spending half the night soothing the baby, and spraying my green insect repellent, and that not working at all, it was a bleary eyed, quite cross me that sat outside with my coffee the next morning, thinking up plans for the culling of the baby spiders!
As I could not use any chemicals with the baby, I was at my wits end, not able to spend another sleepless night. I took off all the bedding from my bed, and the cot, and washed it on hot, then vacuum cleaned the mattresses, the floor, the draped ceiling, and hoped for the best.
Came night time, I was happy when after about half an hour there was nothing yet crawling on me, but then Emil started rolling around and moaning, and soon after I felt the little mites trying to get even with me for murdering their brother and sisters! It was not rain spiders, but these were pitch black, and although small, quite nasty looking.
I then remembered someone telling me that lavender is a good insect repellent, so out of desperation I left the safety of my house, and looking around fearfully in case a burglar was scouting around, I picked a whole bunch of lavender. I exhaled thankfully when I made it back to the house without mishap, then arranged some branches of the lavender around the baby, before getting into my own bed, arranging the rest of the lavender all around me, from my head down to my toes!
I really believed that it worked, as after a while I fell asleep, but woke up some time later from my lovely sleep, and I was sneezing at about ten sneezes per minute, and my eyes itched like the devil. It took a while before the mists of my lovely sleep lifted, and I realized that I had forgotten how allergic I was for pollen!
But the baby was sleeping peacefully, and I decided to leave his lavender, but chucked mine out the door, and after seeing my eyes that was swollen and red like two overripe

tomatoes, I took an anti histamin, and went to sleep in the other room, where I was once again bombarded with a fresh batch of newly hatched baby spiders!