My bedroom curtains are doubled — plain off-white next to the window, and multicoloured on top (the inside side). This arrangement provides blackout so people can sleep past dawn, and keeps the heat out in summer and cold draughts out in winter. The stager thinks the top curtains darken the room! Of course they do — that’s their job. Sigh.

She also wants me to shift the bedroom chests of drawers sideways a couple of feet to make the rooms look bigger to the camera, although in each room that will make the gap between the chest of drawers and the bed uncomfortably narrow and the pictures on the walls will look totally random.

The new grass is doing well except in a couple of spots where the tracked vehicles dug in with particular enthusiasm.

Weather here is hot and steamy, with somewhat less smoke in the air although news reports indicate no slackening of wildfires to the north and west. A red peony that I “temporarily” moved from one flowerbed to another years ago has just surprised me with its first exuberant show of blossom since I came to this house, and the rosebush and clematis vine will soon be in full bloom. With any luck, the garden will be fully dressed when the realtor’s photographer comes.