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Garden Jobs

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.

  1. Keep weeds under control – isn’t that pretty much year round?
  2. Protect fruit blossom from late frosts – my pear tree has been coping quite well on it’s own for a hundred years or so (planted when the house was built) so I plan to ignore this one;
  3. Tie in climbing and rambling roses – my climbing roses are venerable and pretty pointless but since they keep coming back each year despite the vagaries of blackspot, I haven’t the heart to kill them off. I have planted an incredibly aggressive clematis (montana) to climb up one of them, which could usefully be tied in at this stage;
  4. Sow hardy annuals, herbs and wildflower seeds outside – if only they would arrive before the month ends!;
  5. Start to feed citrus plants – hmm, maybe I should buy a citrus plant?
  6. Increase the water given to house plants – my cacti, spider plants and orchids have settled into almost permanent drought with intermittent flash floods. This month will be no different;
  7. Feed hungry shrubs and roses – since I have a tub of bonemeal feed, and this job basically involves scattering stuff around the roses for the rain to water it down to the roots, I can really get behind this little effort;
  8. Sow new lawns or repair bare patches – the decision to let one of the lawns run wild has been really liberating from this kind of task. In an ideal lawn lovers world no doubt I would be required to try some backbreaking raking out of moss in the other lawns but since the moss is both green and soft to walk on, I’ve decided to rename my lawn “moss garden”;
  9. Prune fig trees – hmm, do I need a fig tree?; and finally,
  10. Divide bamboos and waterlilies – with a huge sigh of relief, because bamboos are the one thuggy invader that I don’t have in my garden.

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

  • dig out some Winter bedding violas, and since they’ve put in a good effort;
  • find somewhere to plant them (gravel garden?) add some fertiliser to their pots; and,
  • plant out the new babies.
Wisteria

Meadows

One problem with lockdown is too much time which leads to too many ideas, none of which a very lazy person such as myself wants to make work especially in the garden.

The third “step” in my east-west plot is a little bit dull, comprising one bed of beautiful pink roses, a lawn with a swing seat and bordered by a yew hedge. It’s not a big space and in an ideal world, I might put in another flower bed but that takes much more effort than I’m willing to put in and more than my partner can be coerced to attempt. Digging out the bed for the second rose bed was his last ever garden project, he says. Hmm.

Letting the lawn grow

But we both watched a programme that suggested letting the grass grow. It sounds like the easiest, laziest of projects but I’ve a funny feeling that it might be quite a lot of hard work. The kind of hard work that takes one a look at a lawn left to seed, decided it’s an horrendous mess and then has to scythe the lot back to a height that can be mowed.

Worth a go.

Letting the lawn grow

But I don’t want the whole lot just randomly left to grow. I actually have some practical requirements to be met that mean a couple of grass “paths” have to be kept mown as a minimum: one through to the very back garden step in the driest shade, one to the garden swing seat which is actually the best place in the garden for a morning coffee and one infant of the roses so that I can pick the flowers through the Summer.

What’s the worst thing that can happen?

Sunshine

The deciding factor for whether or not the house has a good or bad day, is the weather. Thankfully there’s a lot of sunshine around in this lockdown.

Violas

And the bedding bought just before Christmas, basically violas (pansies) has survived more or less to cheer us up.

Violas

I’ve lost some to slugs, and negligence, and even more to my cats scripting where they shouldn’t. But for once the Winter baskets have come good, and I have enough pots and troughs to brighten the corners as the pear blossom dies down from the tree and the wisteria has yet to arrive

Mostly my garden is based around purple-pink-white shades.

Tulips

Though to be honest , I could do with more vulgar pinks.

Down near the house where the bright red tulips just refuse to die, the house opinion is divided on the orange tulips. Maybe I should just have gone dark purple but now, inevitably, the brightest of reds and oranges are there forever.

Tulips

Since the closest I can come to tasteful, is the violets everywhere in amongst the paving, I should probably just embrace vulgar and be done with it.

Though if there were to be one show-stopper at the moment, it wouldn’t be flowers or even blossom, but the foliage of the little maple tree planted far too close to the house, long before we arrived.

Spring maple foliage

It may be more beautifully red in the Autumn, but the mix of red and green leaves with dappled sunshine is still beautiful.

Space

Lockdown is a lot easier for the suburbs. People surviving lockdown with small children in cramped urban flats with no outdoor space deserve medals.

Hellebores

Meanwhile those of us lucky enough to have gardens have enjoyed some of the best Spring weather ever and with nothing but time to sit and enjoy the changing flowers.

Hellebores

From the hellebores going over, through the narcissus and crocus.

Rip van Winkle
Crocus

As one flower goes over, another arrives and though the garden seems to be dominated by certain showstoppers, the magnolia or the camellias

camellias
Magnolia

There is also pleasure in the smaller plants, the ones that find their own way into the garden, into the pavements, unplanned.

Primroses

And when the first bright stars in the garden pass, the blossom of the pear tree suddenly arrives like a waterfall draping over the hedge.

Pear tree

As an early example of urban planning, houses here were each planted with a fruit tree alternating pear and apple along the streets.

Falling blossom

So my pear tree is likely to be as old as the house, maybe older if planted on root stock.

Pear blossom

Which would make this tree more than 112 years old and still so very beautiful. Not that the cats care in the sunshine.

Tomcat
Spurge

Even the thuggish of plants, the spurge, is fizzing with lime green flowers and cheerful in the shade.

A number of late plantings from Autumn seem to have worked, from the leftover dwarf narcissus in barrels with forget-me-nots,

through to the bucket with a hole planted up with cyclamen, and the leftover narcissus

Having given up (finally) at trying to get rid of the ever repeating bright red tulips planted too quickly twenty years ago, the yellow and orange tulip companions planted in November seem to make them more comfortable, more deliberately planted.

tulips

Though like everything in my garden, it’s a basic scramble mess. I would love to be able to plant elegantly but have never been able to resist an overabundance of plants and colour.

In place of elegance and quiet contemplation, my garden is full of places to set and watch the business of bees, the mad scramble and competition as my thuggy plants fight it out of their borders.

Fritalaria & muscari

Never mind the impending zombie apocalypse: for the first time ever, my Spring baskets have worked and are looking positively cheerful.

Spring basket – violas

Thank goodness for a place to sit and a cat for company.

The best girl

Zombie Apocalypse

Am I the only person rethinking core skills for the zombie apocalypse?

Fritilaria

Medics obviously stay on the list but who really wants rule-breakers with a total disregard for health and safety on their team right now? 

I’m coming around to the idea that hunters are entirely over-rated as well – they wander about too much and take altogether too many risks vis a vis infection! 

Kitten

Give me some gatherers, organised methodical and likely to have stocked up on paracetamol long before the restrictions were even thought about. And thermometers too (though I know my partner is an outlier on this one).

Almost there…

& now that I’m thinking about it, that just describes mothers.

Plus the zombie apocalypse definitely needs pets. Dogs are good, but cats are better not because they’re practical because they’re mostly not. Unless you have a big dog, they’re really not practical for defensive purposes, and to be honest, there’s not so much defending as expected but lots more lurking in confined spaces 

Kitten and cactus

Cats, whatever their size and pedigree will at least chase rodents (mine won’t kill the beggars but they will bring them home gift wrapped) And they really excel when it comes to small space entertainment when they’re in the right mood and when they’re not, they’ll chill and relax the room right down.

Robin

Because the real problem with the zombie apocalypse is boredom so I’m going to reserve a place on my team for a storyteller or two, someone with rather less STEM and a bit more humanity.

Reasons to be cheerful

It’s 20C outside and sunny.

Magnolia

The robin has finally learned how to hop across from the branch onto the bird feeder.

Spurge

The husband has finally learned to put the dishes into the dishwasher.

Viola

Finally my attempts at a hanging basket have paid off!

Narcissus

Everyone I know and love is well

Muscari & forget-me-nots

I have discovered interactive on-line bridge to play with three mates!

Happy days.

Stay well.

Lockdown

So three of us are locked down at home in the suburbs whilst the youngest daughter is still refusing to come home from university. The university has effectively closed but she still prefers to stay away leaving me with conflicted emotions, partly rejection and partly relief. She’s tricky and that wouldn’t play out well with the rest of us stuck at home.

My eldest and I are taking the allowed walk around the park, painting the careful 2m distance from any of the other people out in the sunshine. With the sun shining away it’s quite uplifting to be out, tempered with a fair bit of bitchy judgementalism when you see other people encroaching on each other’s space.

Magnolia

We’re lucky: we have a garden to enjoy and decent parks nearby that are not too crowded. I’m also one of those mad people who always overstocks the food cupboard and always books deliveries weeks in advance.

My partner is working from home, which is to say, holed up in the spare room (the child still at university) with a couple of computer screens and phone. It’s a relief that hes’ being kept busy and distracted from the “end of days” and from repeat counting of his thermometers.

Whether it’s true or not I can believe the stories of people coming out of family isolation in Wuhan only to immediately file for divorce. Enforced intimacy is a great way to destroy any relationship.

Fritilaria

Things which may end up in divorce or murder include (but are not limited to):

  • Getting up at the crack of dawn (loudly) and insisting on coming in and out of the bedroom looking for “stuff” instead of letting me sleep!
  • Failing to clean up ones own mess.
  • Stacking dirty dishes on top of the dishwasher, but not in the actual dishwasher.
  • Complaining about the noise (or anything else actually) whilst holding a video conference at top volume with the bedroom door open.
  • Constant temperature taking.
  • Failing to carry out their share of the agreed housework.
  • Flush the bloody toilet!

On the other hand there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful not limited to the fact that we’re all basically healthy or at least asymptomatic, that the sun is shining and the garden is lovely. We’re lucky to have enough space to afford each other some time alone and a garden that is a delight at the moment.

I have finally managed to rid every one of my toilets from limescale thanks to an acid wash specialist treatment or two.

Aside from that epic achievement, my gardener arrived yesterday convinced her job qualified as “key work”and absolutely refused to head home without completing all of the jobs she had planned. She gets paid weekly, and I was very clear (from a 2m distance) that she’d be paid whether or not my grass was mown, but she was insistent that clearing the weeds was an essential task and “Well I’m here now”

Muscari

I was left feeling both a bit relieved (my garden will look lovely) and incredibly powerless (unable to evict her from MY garden). In some ways it was a peculiarly British feeling, since I could obviously have shouted or otherwise insisted but it would have felt rude…

My cleaner has stayed home with her husband and kids. We’ll keep paying her weekly wage as well. The tennis club has closed this week and although I’d like to keep paying my coach the amount I normally spend each week, I don’t think that he’d take the money. His wife works so they probably won’t starve but it’s not clear that the club will reopen once the apocalypse is over.

Looking through the Imperial College model currently in favour, this epidemic wave should peak and collapse by August but will be followed by subsequent waves, all hopefully less severe. It is, as yet, unclear as whether this virus creates an effective long term immunity, or whether it’s likely to mutate into a more or less dangerous versions over the coming years.

It is endemic though which means it isn’t going away, ever, but hopefully the worst will be contained and the health service capacity for critical care will not be swamped.

Stay well.

Privilege

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” Stephen Jay Gould.

My parents both left school before they were 13 years old. My father left to take up an engineering apprenticeship, that would ultimately lead to a materially successful life. My mother left school to work in the local factory, to help support her parents and eventually to marry my father.

They were clever people, but born poor, working class.

My father went on to sit his OND and HND engineering exams, scoring the highest marks in the country for mathematics. He went to work for the Arabs, travelled the world, became their senior engineer, one of the very few able to sign off on newly built ships out of the S Korean shipyards for Lloyds Insurers.

My mother passed her 11+ exam aged 9, not because she was especially well-taught in the state local primary school but because she really was just that smart. Like most working class girls, being clever served no purpose, so she valued her looks more. Maybe it was a realistic trade-off since it brought her my father with his upwardly mobile career and money to spend. It made her miserable though, living that half explored life.

When I read articles written that suggest successful people somehow deserve their success, because of some intrinsic merit, it seems that the authors themselves were almost always born lucky, in denial of their inherited wealth and luck.

My parents were born in poverty and it defined their lives, their expectations and achievements. My father worked hard, but he was also born lucky enough to be in the right place to be given the chance to escape poverty through the old apprenticeship system when Liverpool was still a world leading port and engineering powerhouse.

My mother’s luck was even more fickle: she was born beautiful.

My sisters and I were the first generation to stay in school past sixteen, the first to make it to university. We went to the same primary school attended by our parents, years before and the same secondary school. My father was keen on the idea of university, my mother not so much.

At the time, maybe 5% of the overall population attended university. From a state comprehensive school such as mine, with around 1500 kids, that translated into around 5 kids getting to university each year, about 2% because at that time, the private schools were sending around 95% of their pupils to universities.

So when my privately educated friends talk about how “everyone” went to university for “free” from our generation, they’re not so much lying, as just describing their own privilege. Almost everyone they knew did go to university. They were rich and well-educated, so of course they would.

Almost everyone else, everyone from my kind of school, stayed in their towns, got a job at the factory or signed on the dole. And thanks to the occasional catch-up on social media, it’s obvious that they’re still there. My peers went out to work and paid their taxes to fund the rich kids “free” education

But at every stage of academia reached, the one obvious truth to those of us travelling from the poorer side of town was that there were plenty of clever but poor people left behind, plenty of quite stupid but wealthy kids somehow pushed forward.

At university I was struck time and time again by just how many well-educated but fundamentally stupid people could be found.

It started early on, with the kids at primary school whose parents just didn’t see the point of school. They’d probably left alongside my mother aged 13, to go work in the local factories or shops and just expected their kids to do the same. They didn’t have shelves full of books of their kids to read, so their kids didn’t read unless the teachers made them read in class.

But some of the kids were incredibly smart. It showed up in maths mostly. At least to start with, numbers were something that you could either grasp or not. It wasn’t something any of us practised at home.

Sometime around the transfer to secondary school, the ability to read kicked in as an issue just because the maths problems became more verbal, and some of the kids with the best grasp of numbers just disappeared from the top sets never to appear again.

One boy would be absent weeks at a time only to re-appear, pick up wherever we were in maths at the time and seemingly miraculously pass the tests each year for the top set. It lasted up until we were 16, when the maths started to involve more learned skills.

It’s difficult to imagine what that boy might have achieved if he had been supported to the full extent of his ability – we lose so much talent so carelessly.

My children have been well-educated at expensive schools. They have been taught the social “code” of the middle classes along with their algebra. If they struggle in life, they have our financial support to carry them through which means that they can afford to take risks. They have been gifted with every possible financial advantage and privilege.

It is a bitter thought but there will be kids out there, smarter and more talented than mine, born into different circumstances, maybe the children of my peers discarded by academia all those years ago, who could have cured cancer, painted the modern Mona Lisa or written a world-changing polemic.

What responsibility do we have for people less privileged than ourselves? Is it enough to vote for a redistributive political party at each opportunity or is more demanded of us?

Japan

A family trip to Japan was a mixed blessing. Two out of the four adored the country and the trip but the other two, not so much.

My partner was anxious the entire time, and it’s a country that really does not merit any anxiety at all. It is safe, secure and reliable. Japanese people are helpful and kind to guests. As a self-guided holiday destination it just works really well.

Tokyo subway

We used public transport to get around every day, covering large distances and only one train was late (by less than 5 minutes). Announcements are in Japanese followed by English, both spoken and written.

Though sometimes working out what the translation meant took some time.

So either my partner is just becoming more anxious with age which my friends tell me is definitely “a thing”. Or it was because of my psycho second daughter.

Let’s start with the obligatory (and entirely true): I love both of my children.

On holiday in Japan, however, one of them was a lot easier to like. It was probably just a reaction to the inevitable stress of an overseas holiday spent travelling around. I’m under no illusions that it’s a holiday type that really does not suit some people. Many of my friends are quite clear that, for them, almost constant travelling from place to place would be the holiday from hell.

So now that my kids are both around 20, maybe it’s time to stop travelling as a family. except the oldest child was just a total delight to travel with and I’m left wondering whether we could just split the parents and kids up 2:2 and just do different holidays. Hmm. I do not have the social skills to explain that to either my partner or youngest child.

Either way, Tokyo was everything a busy modern city should be, and clean, and safe. It was astonishingly mono-culture (and mainly mono-colour) for someone visiting from London.

The food was astonishingly good and accessible even for vegetarians. Travelling around it was often easier to look for vegan food than to explain vegetarian presumably because dairy isn’t so popular within Japanese food. fast food largely consisted of noodle bars and nigiri to go for us, but the choices for unrestricted diets was extraordinary.

If my youngest child hadn’t insisted on heading back to the hotel mid-afternoon and them refusing to leave until morning, we would have enjoyed the whole experience a lot more. Tokyo felt like an evening city. Maybe all cities light up well but it was a place that also felt incredibly safe at night.

I just wish the company had lived up to the location.

Not dead yet

The hanging baskets are still alive. After a few days of drenching rain, the main garden is looking green and lush but the rest is a little bit depressing.

Just as one part of the garden seems perfect, some other part runs out of control. And at the moment so many pieces of the garden seem flawed that I’m daunted. I’d like to start laying another flower (rose) bed but it seems a bit pointless until the rest of the garden falls into place. I need a list.

  • Gravel garden. Too many plants dies last Summer and stripping and relaying the garden to repair the flat roof hasn’t helped at all. It looked relatively elegant in the Winter, but right now the gravel is covered with speedwell and just looks mostly abandoned. Plus cats have started to scrat in amongst the gravel.
    • Weedkiller on the speedwell in the gravel.
    • Cutback the dead plants and consider replanting en-masse
  • Underneath the holly tree there is a more or less abandoned compost “beehive” useless because it’s just too dry to make compost. Some of the houseleeks have taken root but not enough to make a feature of the place.
    • Empty the beehive and move the composter to the dark garden where even if it isn’t effective (also dry) it will at least look better than weeds.
    • Plant more houseleeks
  • The dark garden is overrun with euphorbia and geraniums except for under the yew trees where nothing is growing at all. The fatsia in one of the planters is looking dreadful and cats have started to scrat.
    • Take out much of the geranium to give other plants some space and take out most of the euphorbia (wear gloves)
    • Re-lay the bed in the dark garden and move plants from underneath the yew hedges leaving a relatively large unplanted area. Consider what to do with the space and whether or not the largest compost bin can be dug out and abandoned to add to the space.
    • Dse the pots being babied down by the house to top up any dead zones
  • The beds at the front garden look messy, overrun with the remains of alliums that never really seemed worthwhile. Without pots to cheer up the space, it just looks bare.
    • Either strip the mess out or plant some fleabane over them
  • Bedding still waiting to be planted out
    • Get on with it – using available family
  • I want an extra rose bed at the back before the yew hedge, maybe raised with sleepers to make it easier. I need to find a man to do the work and price up the sleepers, topsoil and labour though this all assumes I can persuade my partner to cut up some lawn.
    • Do some research and ask around.