Box clipping, leaf gathering, book scuffling, fox scaring and wreath-making and JAIL. 😱

Hello friends! - Happy October!

Lots of five minute stuff going on this week and I have been grappling with what the hell I think I am doing, both on social media and beyond. Very strange because I’ve never felt insecure about it before. It’s emerged because I have been in what I can only describe as a SCUFFLE with an idea for a new book, (NOT about gardening), and I keep coming back to the question of how much I want to reveal about my life and my family and the dreaded FEELINGZ. Being overly confessional has me feeling a bit yuk, (which is why I try to inject a bit of humour into most things) but there is the broader question of why…why am I even showing pictures and snippets of my life on social media? To what end? Yes, I need to sell my books, but I’m never sure how much of a difference I actually make to sales, and the algorithm really hates it when I go away for a while (as I did last week), or stop scrolling and ‘liking’ and commenting. It wants me to be there slavishly, every day, doing the do, and there is a little voice inside of me, growing ever louder, reminding me that I don’t need that kind of pressure in my life. No decision. Just putting that thought out there, and wondering what you all think?

Monday

Last October, before the world changed, I made an autumn wreath, and today I am thinking of doing that again. If you know me, you will know that thinking about something and actually doing that thing often end up many days, weeks, months, or even years apart, but I’m putting this intention here to spur me into doing this very non-essential but then again incredibly essential thing for myself. Gauntlet laid. Now I will watch myself NOT do it. You get the gist.

My early morning gardening is now becoming a bit terrifying because it is PITCH dark and my head torch is starting to remind me of the blair witch project. There are things which make noises in a pitch dark garden (foxes, birds, squirrels, falling leaves etc) which are scary when it’s dark. This morning I heard a noise, swizzled myself around and caught the terrifying (and admittedly beautiful) face of a Mr or Mrs Fox, eyes gleaming, staring at my beam. We both jumped and scarpered off to our respective safe places. Hearts thumping. I will be gardening in the light from now on, and I’m kind of glad it happened because I am able to identify more readily with my smallest, who really doesn’t like to be alone at ALL…in the dark or the light. And what was I doing? Well, raking a few leaves off the lawn and dumping them in my leaf-mould bags. I have three of these, one on the terrace, and two at opposite corners of the garden, hidden inside broken, obsolete terracotta pots. Once the bags are full they get put behind the shed for a couple of years, and the resulting leaf mould then gets spread at the base of my container plantings. Here’s a more detailed thing about it, if you’re interested in making leaf-mould. Always use deciduous leaves though - evergreen ones don’t play ball.

Tuesday

Today I am clipping my box balls in preparation for winter…why? because once all the fluff and colour of the growing seasons have passed, I’m going to be glad that I have pleasing tidy shapes to feast my eyes upon. As I clip, I notice the dreaded frass from the hideous box caterpillar and resolve to spray all the balls tomorrow because there isn’t time today, although today it is not raining, and that means that today would be the perfect time. But ugh, I have to take the children swimming. If I were religious, I would probably view the weekly swimming lesson trip as some sort of penance. Sitting poolside, enveloped by amplified splashing and screaming sounds is basically my idea of hell. Things have improved considerably though, due to Covid 19 because I am not ALLOWED poolside. This means that I get to watch them through a window from somewhere considerably quieter. That still doesn’t solve the thing about helping small, not-quite-dry children into pyjamas (is there anything more frustrating friends…ANYTHING?) but I’ll take it. I do use swimming day to my advantage though because it means that instead of cooking and clearing up, I feed my kids a meal-deal from sainsbury’s. Perfectly good. Did I make a wreath today? No I did not.

Wednesday

I am desperately sad about my bin men. The team has changed and while I am all for meeting new people, this type of change isn’t my favourite. My favourite person in the team, (Les), has had to request a change of route because the driver (Mick) is deliberately slow. Ugh, how ENRAGING! The thing is that that quicker you finish your shift, the quicker you can go off and do other things (in Les’s case, that means coaching football and putting his feet up) and to have someone being deliberately slow and slothful, I mean I would want to KILL them! The upshot is that Les had to move, and his friends moved with him and now I am having to make friends with new people and it’s just not the same…I just don’t know the FORM yet.

I go out and pick up the windfalls, sweep the terrace and tie in the jasmine to my pergola. I am a bit concerned about the chocolate vine, which completely stopped growing a couple of months ago and seems to be frozen in time. Of course things stop growing at this time of year, but I’m sensing that this particular plant has something wrong with it. I’m watching closely.

Then disaster. A football lands squarely into the plastic storage box containing my sweet peas, obliterating them. I’m actually quite glad that I didn’t notice this until just before I’m about to go out for a once-in-a-blue-moon date with the Rotter…the destruction seems to open the flood gates and I weep openly for a while. Every single stem is broken. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. It’s ok though, really it is, because there is ample time to sow more, and my frugality with the seeds means I don’t have to source more…it’s just…annoying. Some of the rootrainers have been squashed too and I realise they’ve done their last season, so I order more and leave it there. If you’ve not yet sown sweet peas I’ll put a link to my method below (my method is not the only one though).

And of course, no wreath.

Thursday

It’s time to take charge of the pots piling up behind the shed. My fox friend has been using this area to hang out and several things are broken. Those of you who are not new here may remember that the roof of my potting bench thing is completely broken. Something needs to be done, clearly, but quite WHAT is beyond me right now. I very rarely get ‘dressed’ to do outdoor stuff but today is an exception. Wellies needed, and clothes that don’t matter. I bring out all the pots, edit out the broken ones, sweep and blow out the sycamore leaves and brush down all the pots. The potting bench itself is almost useless as it is now so open to the elements, so I put everything back underneath the main ‘table’. That was far more than five minutes and I also need a bath. Thank goodness for school. Thank ACTUAL LOVELY DELICIOUS GOODNESS for it.

There’s a GROSS piece of TV that I am absolutely obsessed with at the moment. It’s called ‘60 Days In’ and it follows a group of volunteers who are plonked into a jail in a place called Jeffersonville in Indiana. Friends, it is the MOST PETRIFYING thing to watch - petrifying in the sense that I am terrified and yet I CANNOT MOVE MY EYES. The women’s ‘pod’ is scarier than the men’s - there’s a constant sense of menace and the idea that you could get jumped at any moment, day or night, just for looking at someone in the ‘wrong’ way, or saying something wrong, and friends, there is NO help - the guards just DO NOT CARE about these humans in this hideous place, with no daylight, and no space, and NOTHING to do except tattoo themselves with sharpened staples and take ALL the drugs and hurt one another. But the worst bit of all is when they are put in this room with all these new people, and they have to work out how to fit in, how to be, how to SURVIVE, with no way of getting out. If anyone feels at all out of sorts, or sad or hard done by, I recommend watching this program. You will feel so happy and lucky and thrilled that you can go about your business without feeling like you’re going to be violently assaulted, and you will want to HUG your bed and dance naked in the fresh air. RECOMMENDED.

No wreath making…none whatsoever

Friday

The gladiolus callianthus is dancing its last hoorah and I’m finally able to use these two pots of compost for mulching in the flowerbeds. The importance of using fresh compost for tulips in pots was really driven home to me when I watched Claus Daulby’s video (see my last newsletter). I’m a big believer in re-using old compost but I hadn’t previously understood the importance of making sure that tulips aren’t planted in the same potting soil more than once. I guess this must have something to do with diseases as well as nutrients. I am too busy to look it up. Anyway off I go to the garden centre and come back with several bags of lovely new peat-free compost, ready for the tulips, which have yet to arrive.

More box clipping today, and finally a dose of Xentari (see this post for more info on box tree caterpillar and moth). I am highly aware and a bit terrified that half term is around the corner. Eldest has TWO WEEKS, and no, we’re not going away. My brain wants to organise ACTIVITIES for every single minute but the sensible part of it knows that this is a folly, and that all I need to do is lean in to the mess and chaos and lack of control and spend the time loving them. I am continually amazed at how much MORE needy an older child is than a younger one, and I need to stop being amazed and just open my arms and DO the love thing.

And yes, I gather up several dusky pink hydrangea stems and poke some of them into a wreath form (see post below for links to my rattan wreaths), and hang it on my front door. Better late than never.

Have a beautiful weekend, dear friends, and DON’T GET THROWN IN JAIL!

x Laetitia

Clipping box without agonising over it

How I sow sweet peas in the autumn

Easy, zero-wire wreath