Cutting sweet peas, layering thyme, dividing spider plants and making lego space rockets 🚀🚀🚀
Hello friends - Plenty of gardening this week, also plenty of swearing.
Monday
When will I ever learn? my Cobaea seedlings, so perfect and green and delicious have fallen victim to my negligent brain. I put them out last week, to soak up some rays , meaning to put them in a cold frame over night; the beginning of their hardening off process, and instead, I just left them there, on my propagation table, to endure the shock of outdoor nighttime temperatures, without warning. The leaves have turned a sort of papery purple, and growth has basically stopped. it’s the shock. I’m not at all worried - they’ll be utterly fine eventually - it’s only that I like to feel I’ve done everything possible to give something a good start in life, that’s all. I swear a bit as I sweep and put out cushions and pick sweet peas and water. I also pinch out the remainder of my sedums, and I put the hose into the pond, which is becoming more of a bog for lack of rain. I leave it there, while we go off to tramp around the park, with strict instructions that Rotter must switch off hose in twenty minutes’ time. I ought to have known not to attempt this. Rotter is someone not adept at doing more than one thing at a time. When I went on a parenting course they taught me how to turn stuff around, so that one was able to see the upside of every challenging behaviour (child not doing your bidding? We WANT her to question authority; to grow up challenging perceived wisdom…she’s just using you for practice…it’s FINE!) I found this series of lessons very useful for my marriage as well as my parenting, which is why I should say that my Rotter’s ability to focus, entirely and without distraction on one thing is a VERY ADMIRABLE quality. It means that he is able to do really complicated work stuff in the midst of total and complete chaos. This is a very good thing when you are working from home; stuff gets done. the downside of course, is that everything else. EVERYTHING else, (especially someone telling you to switch off a hose) is simply white noise.
Our pool is full of tadpoles. it has an ‘infinity’ edge, which drains into a ditch. when that fills up, it just spills over onto our concrete terrace. We return to the sight of many, many little tadpoles flailing about on the concrete and spend the next hour with three spatulas and a cake slice rescuing them from certain death. I suppose it kept us busy, kept the jeopardy up and all that. Anyway, I really love my frogs…I mean like I REALLY love them, so SLIGHTLY stabby thoughts and a bit more swearing before bed.
Tuesday
I wake up, and briefly entertain the idea of sowing some squash while I water everything. The morning watering thing has become sacrosanct to me. It’s literally the only time I get on my own in the garden, and I treasure it. I happens before I do anything, before I have my cup of tea, or brush my teeth, or get dressed even. My early bird son is usually downstairs by this time also, but at the moment he is busy making the NASA Apollo Saturn V out of lego. The thing is utterly colossal and he has been at it for two weeks. Every morning I come down to find him on the floor, completely naked apart from a pair of socks, one leg beneath him, one leg up, with his chin resting on his knee, poring over the instructions, surrounded by lego bits. I’m not sure I could love him more at these times (and no friends, his absolute and complete focus, and the fact that he may have inherited this from SOMEONE does NOT escape me). The rocket is a bit complicated for someone his age, so Rotter often spends valuable sleeping time dismantling the thing and re-building it in the dead of night so that son can continue (at which point I could not love HIM any more) Anyway, the boy never disturbs me during this blissful morning time, so I pad about, barefoot with the watering can dousing things to my heart’s content. A friend messaged me last week to ask me why I didn’t just use a hose. It’s a good question and I thought it worth repeating the answer here for anyone who is puzzled. The main answer is that you know how much you’ve watered, and it’s much faster with a watering can. You can dump a really large amount of water into a pot with a big watering can into a spot much quicker than you can with a hose. There is of course also the question of getting around a large-ish garden dragging a hose behind you…(not easy). And then there is feeding, which has to happen weekly for containers…that needs a watering can. So that’s why i use a watering can (one with a really fat spout, to which I can add a rose if needed, for seedlings), and I have a tin bath into which I dunk it for quick re-filling. The hose, during these watering sessions, is re-filling the bath, rather than the can. When something needs a lot of water (for example, my hydrangeas, which really do seem to need extra when it’s super-hot) I do use the hose, on at the tiniest trickle, for several hours to ensure targeted, deep watering.
I don’t get around to sowing squash today, but YOU might! Here is a very simple how-to, along with an answer to that tricky question; what’s the difference between a squash and a pumpkin?
Wednesday
I pick a big bunch of sugary pink sweet peas this morning. my first big bunch. Every day I am thankful that a bothered to sow them last year. I’m not saying that to be smug; I am truly truly thrilled with my former self - the payoff is marvellous. Flowers matter. Scent matters. Very small things matter. My life has, in fact, shrunk in these weeks and months…morphed into something where very small things, like a spotless kitchen floor, or a weed-free patch of earth, or a visit to see my parents have taken on huge significance.
My eldest has found a secret stash of water balloons (nothing to do with me…I’m the fun police and I loathe bits of balloon plastic everywhere) but it’s not like there’s anything better for them to do. I manage to put off the water fight until the afternoon by suggesting she make a three course supper for us all (something she has been longing to do for ever but which my unwillingness to go the shops has made tricky). But we have masks now, and gloves, oh, and senior government advisers who don’t seem to be taking this thing seriously, so I get myself together and buy the necessary from the high street instead of paying for someone to deliver it all. The supermarket is weirdly normal. I wonder why I haven’t ventured out before. Oddness. Then I banish them all to the tv and set up a chair in the shade so I can chat to Ann-Marie Powell on Instagram Live. We witter away for thirty minutes about parenting, and what the garden has meant to us. If you want to have a look, the interview is on her instagram feed here. There are two consecutive posts because we had a technical glitch in the middle. I come away revived and remind myself that I really must call my friends more.
Thursday
More sweet peas, a big bunch this time, which I beef up with some alchemilla mollis flowers and plenty of tendrils to make it all ramshackle and delicious. I water the thyme and I’m reminded of a brilliant way to layer thyme that has gone woody: Layering as a way of encouraging the stems of plants to form roots, by putting them into contact with the soil. You can, for example, take a stem of rosemary, or jasmine, or whatever, and pin it down to the soil with a hairpin, leave it like that for a while, and you’ll eventually get a rooted stem, that you can remove from the parent plant and pot up separately. If you have a thyme plant that’s past its best…you know the ones that are all naked beneath with leaves only at the tops of the stems…you can do the same thing, but to the whole plant. Mix up some gritty, or sandy compost and pour it around the edge of the plant, smooshing it up around its crown, so that only the top part of the shoots can be seen. Keep things in this state until late in the summer, (adding more compost mix if needed) and you’ll see roots appearing at the base of the stems, at which point you can cut several of them off the parent plant and re-pot, disposing of the old one. You can get loads of new plants this way. Recommended. I spend the rest of the day chasing five minutes of down-time and failing. Two of my three children will go to school next week (only for two days, but I’ll take it). I bought an antibody test last week…harvested a vial of blood from my little finger whilst the children watched. It hurt. You’ll be happy to know that I was v brave… which came back negative, which I am totally gutted about, and the decision to send them back to school hasn’t been taken lightly…but honestly, we are at the point now where we must choose between our mental health and increasing the risk of getting this thing, and I’m prioritising my addled, sweary brain and soul.
Friday
The whole water balloon thing has got totally out of control. The children drop an enormous water bomb which explodes on the kitchen floor. Unfortunately we have a floor plug in the middle of it. The entire house shorts out. Small boy, (who dropped the balloon) is terrified that we will be cross with him. I hold him for ten minutes, rocking and reassuring him, imagining the water filling up the plug hole. I remember making mistakes like this as a child, registering the panic on grownup’s faces and in their shoulders, and splintering into petrified sobs because I thought the world would end. Rotter is, as usual, on the phone. He CONTINUES the conference call as he madly tries to dry the socket out. The fridge is off. The oven is off. Nothing works. He signals wildly for a hairdryer and an extension cable. I swear, loudly…just to be helpful. We dry the socket. Nothing. He removes it and there is more drying. I ask if there is anything I can do, and he says that an electrician would be helpful. Luckily I have made friends with the builders from next door. You cannot move in our street for builders. He emerges, mask on, shoes removed and PERFECT manners to save the day. I rummage in my purse for cash which he point blank refuses. We pack up cookies for him and his builder friends and resume our lives, taking a trip to see my parents for a picnic (which we should frankly have had in their garden where it would have been less crowded) but the children climb amongst tree roots, and we make friends with a squirrel, watching him as he expertly eats an almond (my father is never without almonds), leaving the thin brown skin in ribbons at his feet. How CLEVER.
I grab string and tie in my clematis as soon as we return, and I also top-dress the morning glories with gravel. And then, on a total whim, I grab the neglected spider plant which sits in the tiny bathroom that Rotter uses, and go at it with a knife to divide. The poor thing is completely pot-bound, with many, many babies. I divide the main plant into four (it looks to me as though there are four plants in there anyway) and re-pot them. Then I detach all the babies and repot them. The result is a huge tray of spider plants which I will probably foist on my poor unsuspecting neighbours.
The spider plant thing has made me very happy indeed, but not nearly as joyful as the news that Rotter will take the children to his parents for the day tomorrow. What will I even DO, friends? Two thoughts:
Don’t tidy
Change the locks
All the good things, dear friends
x Laetitia
PS you may have missed
My review of Cleve West’s new book: The Garden Of Vegan - and why I am using plant milk in my tea.
The Chelsea Chop; how and why to chop your perennials now for later flowers and less flop
Thinning out: why and how to perform this essential bit of surgery on your seedlings