Where is the most beautiful part of the world that you have ever seen?
Yosemite in California US has to come top of my list and though it’s a total cliche, there is such a sense of grandeur in the scale of the valley, that it really could be described as God’s own country.
It’s one of the few places that I’ve been back to, deliberately and consciously because it is so very beautiful.
If you had to choose your favourite places that you’ve visited where would they be? Lockdown seems to be the time for lists, especially when it comes to social media.
The most surprisingly beautiful place in the world, that I’ve been to is the Namib Rand desert in Namibia. Words cannot describe such a truly stunning the landscape.
There is a crest in the dunes where you arrive and pause for breath and the whole world seems spread out before you, the colours astonishing and the world seems larger somehow.
Tofu one pot dishes make surprisingly comforting suppers, for when you don’t want a big lockdown extravaganza
Is it possible to be a little bit racist? A group of racist white men ran riot in London leading to a number of comments suggesting the UK was racist.
This was immediately followed by a whole series of replies saying that actually the UK was not racist, they were British and not personally racist. The people rioting in London were nothing to do with them, did not represent them so it as, apparently unfair, to describe the UK as racist. Because they do not see themselves as racist, the country they live in cannot be described as racist even when clearly racist white men are running around the capital city looking for black people to lynch.
& it’s taking me some time to process all of this.
Clearly I don’t feel myself to be personally racist. Who does? Even the white men running around London looking for people to lynch probably don’t describe themselves as racist. They probably call themselves “patriots” or some other co-opted word.
As a white person, immensely privileged when living in a predominantly white country, I don’t think that I get to decide for myself whether I’m racist or not. I can decide to try not to be racist, todo my best to be positively fair, open and accepting of other people whatever their ethnicity but I don’t believe that I get to decide whether or not I’m succeeding in not being racist. I don’t get to mark my own scorecard.
Passively doing nothing cannot equate to not being racist.
Not charging around the streets of London looking for people to kick, people to spit on, people to abuse, is a pretty low bar to set as a minimum standard on not being racist. It’s really not good enough.
& it also doesn’t really seem good enough to say that the rioting racists are nothing to do with me, therefore I don’t need to worry, or worse still, you don’t need to worry. We’re not racist so everything is ok. Even as racist white men run around on the streets looking for someone to beat up.
“Yes, but…” seems a peculiarly inadequate response to a racist mob.
And suggesting racism is someone else’s problem because “I’m not racist” is just another way of trying to make the victims responsible for their own abuse and is in itself, intrinsically racist.
Because it just isn’t possible to be a little bit racist, anymore than a woman can be a little bit pregnant: racism is racism. And we are all responsible, responsible for identifying what we’ve done wrong that has allowed this to happen, as well as working out what we can do better to prevent it in the future.
Sfouf is a Middle Eastern semolina turmeric cake, made with simple cupboard ingredients, no eggs and no butter. It’s vegan-friendly, light and tasty.
Instructions
Recipe Notes
Storage: Store any leftovers in an airtight container. They will last about 7 days at room temperature or about 10 days in the fridge.
Substitutes: For best results, follow the recipe as is. However here are some common substitutes that would work well in this recipe.
Peak lockdown purchase on-line so far has been 100 cans of coke, not because I wanted so much to drink but because it was the only way to realistically meet the wholesaler’s minimum spend and purchase the samba oelek I actually wanted.
I can (sort of) imagine my family making it’s way through the cans over the next few weeks. I couldn’t imagine the same usage of 50 jars of intense Indonesian chilli sauce. We went for four jars of chillies paste. It’s one of the few vegetarian brands around.
Mostly though when it comes to food, I’m buying much the same as usual though 25% extra to cater for the extra adult no living at home.
My real problem is buying for the garden.
The problem is two fold: firstly, there are lots of lovely plants out there that would look wonderful in my garden, the garden that I’m not basically obliged through boredom to spend lots more time sitting in; and, secondly, there’s a time delay on almost all purchases.
The latter is the real problem. Because everything is taking weeks to arrive, after a day or two, I get antsy and start to think of something else that would look just as good or better. When these plants finally arrive, I’m going to have a huge amount of work to get through in very short order. Since my attitude to the garden is one of essential laziness, this is going to be a problem so I’d better plan.
Garden (4) furthest from the house, shady and dry as can be given the yew, holly, privet and hawthorn hedges i’ve sub-contracted out some work with a company coming in to cut the yew hedge back to a manageable size and to raise the canopy on the yews I’ve let run to trees.
I’ve also ordered some beehive composers that will live in the corners and which I’ll probably use to store bought compost as everywhere is far to dry to actually compost garden matter back there. I suppose if I were to wrap it in plastic, I could compost some leaf mould from Autumn leaves.
I’ve also ordered three huge (1m) perspex mirror stars. Just because.
For a few years I’ve been thinking about standing some up against the holly hedge as a decoration and then lockdown boredom hit home and I got tap happy on the website.
So far so simple but then we hit the 48 mixed foxglove plug plants. I’m probably supposed to grow these on before planting, but it seems unlikely that will happen. In an ideal worlds, I’ll thread them through the geraniums currently taking over the space and they’ll hopefully pop up in June/July, re-seeding and putting on a good show for years to come. Hmm. Foxgloves are biennials. Will the plug plants flower this year or next?
The shady garden is livened up with brightly coloured pots, full of begonias which are the easiest most tolerant bedding plants for dry shade. Some of the orange begonias come back year after year, but I’ve started using white to fill the pots in shade as they stand out more. This year I’ll have 30 Begonia ‘Non-Stop Joy Mocca White’ garden ready plants to find a home for, maybe 15 in garden (4) and 15 in garden (2)
For garden (3) the lawn I’m letting grow wild, I’ve the easiest purchase to deal with i.e. 1 scatter pack of wildflower seed which I should probably rake and clear some grass before sowing but will no doubt end up just giving a couple of throws over the grass. If there’s any left, I might try it in any empty bits of the shady garden (4). With a neighbour’s tree about to pop it’s clogs, the canopy is getting thinner and sunny but dry would suit more plants. I’d be ecstatic if we managed to end up with dappled shade as opposed to the stygian depths currently endured.
I’ve also ordered a replacement for the penstemon that kicked the bucket a Winter ago (1 Penstemon ‘Pensham Just Jayne’) that will need to be dug into a gap and rather a lot (12) Geranium ‘Rozanne’ jumbo plug plants which will fill some gaps around the roses in the borders of both garden (3) and (2).
Garden (2) has 6 pots in shade (Begonia ‘Non-Stop Joy Mocca White’) to be planted up to supplement any surviving begonias from last year. It also has some pots and troughs in full sun which need something different. Plus there are the hanging baskets which I plan to plant up again. I live in hope that for once I might remember to water the beggars often enough.
They have some variegated cat mint and last year’s moss (maybe from the year before) so I’ll just top them up with some small plants and try to keep them watered. In the centre, around the plastic water bottle reservoir, I’ll plant up two of the 5 Geranium ‘Appleblossom Rosebud’ jumbo plug plants which are a sort of pinkish white. I should probably add a contrast into the baskets, maybe some of the 20 Calibrachoa ‘Million Bells Blue’ Postiplug plants or lobelia?
It also has a small trough spilling over the wall with a few gaps I usually fill with lobelia. This year I have ordered too many i.e. 36 blueLobelia ‘Monsoon’ plug plants so they’ll be filling up troughs by the gravel path and any split over will find their way to the gravel garden.
My daughter plans on repeating her efforts at growing vegetables in pots and bags so we’re expecting 6 Tomato ‘Tumbling Tom Red’ plug plants, having already kicked off three bags of potatoes.
Garden (1) has pots, lots of pots leading up the stairs and also some already full of ferns near to the water spout. In the blue pots on the stairs, some geraniums have survived from last year and I plan to top them up with some of the 10 bright red Geranium ‘Octavia Hill jumbo plug plants. The clash between bright red plants an blue pots works well, almost better if there’s a mishmash of reds in the pots themselves.
For the other pots, I plan to brighten them up with some (10) white Calibrachoa ‘Million Bells White’ plug plants, 10 white Petunia ‘Trailing Surfing White plug plants and 24 Bacopa ‘Snowtopia’ plug plants. Again any left over will make their way to the gravel garden to supplement the geranium and fleabane daisies that are taking over everywhere.
My Spring garden is lovely but it is the nature of every gardener to see the gaps, to want more rather than less and so when I sit and enjoy the flowers, I’m also thinking about what I want to buy for next year.
Anemone blanda blue lie low at the edge of the pink rose border but there are gaps that could be filled there, and maybe a row repeated down at the front of the white rose border would be lovely too.
The crocus planted in the front lawn were mowed by the gardener by mistake so made only a late and lacklustre showing. They could be supplemented with some whites and purples now that everyone knows where to find them.
One plant we don’t need more of is muscari or fritalaria which seem to be incredibly happy
They crocus have enjoyed the gravel garden this year but could maybe be joined with some early dwarf iris, planted in nice large clumps.
Whilst I love the darker blues and purples, these are quite hard to see down the garden from the house, but very easy from the windows onto the gravel roof.
I quite enjoy the contrast but wonder how dark I could go.
I am toying with the idea of making the shady garden a spring garden, since obviously the deciduous trees at least allow some light through and the overwhelming presence of geranium is muted.
Some white narcissus pre-date me in the garden and seem shade tolerant. They’re later than the bright yellows that I’ve planted but seem tough enough to cope with my neglect.
And that’s all before we even start to think about tulips.
Working on the basis that these recur somewhat, but never perfectly, then I’ll always be looking to top up each Autumn. Some types are definitely more resilient than others, notably the bog-standard reds and parrot purples.
For underneath the hedge, I’d like to plant more species tulips though given it’s origins (sunny greek islands) it would probably do better up in the gravel.
Though maybe what I should do is move one of the thugs from the shade garden down to the lower garden and plant out under the hedge.
And despite having far too many in the main garden, I’m still considering whether or not to add some fritalaria to the muscari in gravel. If one works so well surely the other should as well?
In amongst the main rose beds, I’m generally happy with the white-pink-purple theme but this year there seems to be a lack of pink. The white tulips have started life quite yellow which is a bit disconcerting but they do seem to be settling into a brighter white.
It’s possibly all to do with the timing of the flowers. Maybe the darker Queen of the Night were just late to arrive, along with the Shirley
The front bed with it’s indestructible red tulips, has benefitted from some yellow and orange companions, but could be made even better with darker shades of red.
Maybe I could bulk out the red even further to make the clash even more obvious.
Or even a few more orange bulbs dotted towards the lawn.
Though it seems to be outside of my preferred palette of colours, if we must have those red shades, then let’s make them bold bruise shaded clashes rather than apologetic whimpers.
And since they seem to have arrived a bit later but looked beautiful, how about a few more Tulip clusiana “Peppermintstick”
Got to love bold, if you can’t pull off elegant.
People are bored. Well, lucky, middle class people and more people are bored, as opposed to the less lucky who are busy trying to work out how to feed their families with no wage.
So there are plenty of social media “challenges” out there attempting to keep the lucky people busy and one of them was to spend a week choosing and sharing one of your favourite pieces of art each day.
& it’s raining so the garden is washed out as an activity.
The first took no thought at all. I have always, totally and probably irrationally loved the Van Gogh Sunflowers to be found in the National Gallery.
No idea why this specific, one of many, sunflowers appeals the most but it always has. Whilst the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam is wonderful and well worth a visit (along with the Kroller-Muller Museum in Brabant) to see his many paintings, this one, close to home has always given the most enjoyment, not happiness exactly, but a sort of struggling, wonky joyfulness.
Somewhere on the list has to be a Modigliani nude.
Of all the male artists painting women nude, he seems to enjoy their bodies the most and that pleasure, that satisfaction seems to translate into the painting itself somehow. His nudes and portraits seem to be the antithesis of Picasso whose portraits of women always seem to feel a little cruel.
In any selection of my favourite paintings there would have to be a portrait by Rembrandt, probably not a self-portrait but rather a commission of one of the powerful, wealthy men and their wives. More than most, Rembrandt seems to capture the soul of a person within their portrait with kindness.
There would also have to be a painting by Klimt, one reason I’m thinking about making a trip to Vienna to view some of his many joyful works housed in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. The most obvious delights are covered with gold, the Kiss or the portraits of Adele Blochar, but some of his more fantastical works, stages of life and/or death are beautiful.
So far, and I’m tending towards chocolate box, pretty art. Whilst tempting to tack back towards some kind of gritty reality with modern artists, Rodin is hardly gritty. Whilst the Thinker or Lovers are tempting, my favourite Rodin would be the man with a broken nose.
It would be difficult to choose just one Giacometti sculpture, though the Tate exhibition certainly highlighted the figures ranging from massive to matchbox. The sculptures that I remembered most clearly were the most simple, the Nose or the Arm.
But surely there should be some current artwork included in any list of favourites? Or some women?
Paula Rego
Or maybe Bridget Riley?
Or Georgia O’Keefe whose exhibition warranted four separate visits with different people and alone.
And then when the end of the most immediate or “quick” list is reached, there are the various and insistent “what about…” such as Rothko.
Or Sergent, how could I miss John Singer Sargent?
Or the current national treasure that is David Hockney?
But what about photography, about Ansel Adams,
or Annie Leibovitz, whose portrait of a very pregnant Demi Moore is a memory from my youth. I bought the magazine because of the cover – I’d never seen anything like it.
And suddenly there are too many artists and too many pieces of art, rather than too few to mention and two weeks have skipped by without thinking.
Because nothing says comfort food so well as potatoes, especially Indian potatoes!
April is almost over and I’ve only just looked at the list of gardening jobs on the RHS site for this month.
Needless to say, this is the first month of the year that I’ve bothered to even think about jobs: laziest garden lover ever.
Since some bedding plug plants have just arrived in the post, calibrochas (blue bells) then I suppose I will have to add an extra couple of jobs to the list. The plants should probably be put into plant pots and grown on for a bit before planting out, but I’m just going to plant them straight out into the London warmth. The means I’m going to have to
