Bindweed lessons, houseplant holidays and the sweet joy of going OUT 💃🏽🕺🏽

Hello Friends!

I hope you’ve all had a good few weeks - if you’re new to this newsletter, welcome! I had a bit of a break in order to focus on the children, and, well, not entirely losing my ess aich eye tee, but I’m so happy to be back writing….thank you for all your lovely messages. I’m so sorry not to have replied to these…I’m afraid that things just got on top of me. I read them all, and I am incredibly grateful for each and every one, and I’ll be back to replying to messages going forward, so please don’t let my silence stop you from getting in touch if you want to! The five minute gardening never stopped…. There’s been a fair amount of weeding, and a bit of mowing, and lots of tying in and dead heading, which, I would say, is probably ‘July in a nutshell’ on the garden maintenance front, along with the thinning of fruit, if you have fruit trees, so that the fruit you DO eventually pick is bigger and juicier and more delicious. Other than that, I’d say that most of my efforts have been focused on making sure there is somewhere nice for me to sit, because that, after all, is what the garden is for. Here are my five minute forays for this week!

Monday

The bindweed needs taking in hand. It’s been a slow, steady realisation that reminds me of being in my twenties and ignoring my post for weeks on end. At some point, some HOW it’s going to have to be tackled. We can watch, in denial, day after day as the pile of envelopes gets bigger and bigger, until the need to have it cleared away becomes so urgent that we cannot ignore it any more. Bindweed is amazing, and I have decided simply, and without much emotion, that I am going to imitate it this week, and copy its tenacious persistence. To this end I set out an extra five minutes every day just to deal with the bindweed. Today I am tackling the stuff that’s threatening to smother my baby hydrangea paniculata (which friends, I hope one day will be a large part of my back border. It’s easy to neglect these large shrubs in favour of the more flashy fillers that surround them whilst they are reaching their full potential, forgetting that the whole point of them is that year on year, fewer fillers will be needed. I unwind the bindweed carefully from the plant, which is now flowering, and find the source of it, directly at the base of the hydrangea. Bindweed is clever. If I were to give my plants personalities, (which I don’t…that way chaos lies) but if I WERE then bindweed would most probably be the ‘annoying friend’ Every group of friends has one…someone who’s always there and who nobody really likes. This friend benefits greatly from the comfort of the group but doesn’t contribute anything to it. Nobody can remember how she got ‘in’ and it’s become impossible to get rid of her. That’s bindweed. I should probably say here that the ‘she’ could also be a ‘he’ (I’m just remembering a SPECIFIC PERSON, friends) and I should also say that one of the greatest breakthroughs I ever had in gardening was the incredibly freeing realisation that the bindweed would always be there. I don’t use chemicals, and that means I cannot eradicate it from my garden. It grows mostly right at the boundaries - much of it comes from the other side of walls or fences. It’s there to stay, and I am happy simply to ‘control’ it by doing my best. There is absolutely no reason for it to spoil my life and actually, weeding it out mostly gives me an enormous amount of pleasure…that thing of getting RID: RECOMMENDED.

Tuesday

I do a bit of Chelsea chopping - alchemilla mollis needs its flowers removed which have now lost their fresh acid green colour and are beginning to brown. I also chop some of the lychnis which is a prolific self-seeder. I marvel every year how much of it comes up from teeny tiny cracks and crevices in bricks and paving…these tiny ones will never hope to flower but on they grow, not bothering about that…just doing the best they can…is there a message there? The pot where my sweet peas were is still empty (I cleared it out last week - the sweet peas were past their best and, as I said before, I am entirely unsentimental about keeping plants that aren’t earning their place. The empty pot is mocking me and I’m having my usual agonising about what to put in it. This will continue for a while. I know myself. I consider chopping the salvia back too, but in the end I don’t. Yes, it’s flowering, and I’m happy about that. Everything else in life has been cruelly curtailed. My darlingest 11 year old has had to do all the boring stuff of year six with none of the exciting end of year activities…everything has been cancelled. I feel so sad for her and her sweet friends, so yes, I want my salvia to be over the top. I want it bonkers and tall and stupidly unmanageable…I WANT that. But if you wanted to delay your salvia gratification, for stronger, beefier plants, then you could totally do that now. And if you don’t have any salvia in your garden then excuse me but who in the world actually ARE you? Find one you like and make sure you squeeze it in somewhere, and then next year, have lots of them: RECOMMENDED.

Wednesday

More bindweed removal, this time filmed by Domino, who did a shocking job with the camera work but still managed to break my inbox with declarations of love for her. I go out and pick nasturtiums for a salad, and get caught up with all the deadheading. I love deadheading as it’s something I can do without getting dirty and whilst holding tea or wine. The petunias I bought a few weeks back are thriving, particularly the ones I put in what I call ‘the inhospitable urn’ - an incredibly pretty thing but with hardly any space in it for roots to thrive. I think this good fortune may have something to do with the fact that I hooked it up to my drip-feed watering system. Seriously friends, if you have containers, then setting up a watering system for them is a VERY good way to love yourself. It means that you never forget to water, and your plants completely adore you for it. Particularly if you have things like petunias which need pampering. I was given this system as part of a collaboration I did with Gardena, but there are other ones, just as good, out there. It’s incredibly easy to set up and I find myself recommending it summer after summer (for clarity, I don’t get commission!…I just love it and like I said, there are other brands available). Watering system for pots: RECOMMENDED.

I tie in a few errant pieces of morning glory, which is growing beautifully on the new piece of trellis I put up late last year. I’m growing it alongside cobaea scandens, and both of them are in pots. The drip-feed watering system doesn’t stretch to this area but if it did, I’d be happy because I have to be extra vigilant with watering the morning glory. And no, the irony of nurturing the morning glory whilst doing everything I can to remove the bindweed is not lost on me.

At bed time, small boy asks me to read to him. I decline, citing ‘clearing up’. He says “But you’re my MUMMY”. I get into bed with him and do the right thing.

Thursday

Today is the very last day of school for everyone. I am struggling to come up with a plan for how to make the ‘holidays’ different from most of what we’ve been experiencing during lockdown. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you might know that I have a bullet journal, and I’ve had real problems using it over the last four months. It’s not that I write a JOURNAL in the tradition sense…this is literally a black book crammed with lists and dates etc…it doesn’t have FEELINGS in it or anything like that. But I realise that my lists, and appointments, and plans are in fact the touchstones from which I can access past experiences…so a route to feelings, and I suppose that in not writing anything down, I am, in effect denying that this period, which I am continuing to struggle through and accept, is actually happening at all. The entries stop abruptly at the beginning of March, and apart from a few pathetic attempts to begin again, there is nothing. I suppose what I am saying is that life is a bit of a sleepwalk at the moment. I am trying hard to engage with my children, but everything else is on hold, and I feel like everything else might have to be on hold forever, because it seems like things may BE like this forever. I have stopped working entirely. I have an idea for a new book but I lack the mental space to begin it. I know well that I should just BEGIN, I know that, but, well, suffice to say, that I am completely up-to-date with every single Real Housewives episode ever aired and my clothes are all too tight. I don’t think I am alone. But bloody hell it feels unpleasant.

Today, like all the other days, I will haul myself off the sofa and show up, with smiles and after-school snacks and probably some makeup. I pick my children up and say good bye to their teachers. Uncontrollable tears compounded by the fact that I cannot actually hug any of them. The end of term picnic is rowdy and happy. Our poor little year sixers who have missed all the fun of finishing primary school have been incredibly lucky to have a dedicated and saintly group of parents put together a beautiful yearbook for them in record time. The treasured teachers turn up and I can finally tell them how much they have meant to us. And then back home to cobble together more snacks, and some supper. I hang laundry. And practice Spanish. And try to connect with my children. And open wine. And stitch a bit. And go to bed.

Gardening? Ah yes, the houseplants - they are all outside (I put most of them out during the boiling spell) and it feels good to watch them sway in the breeze. Overcast days like this are fine, but you don’t want them in the baking sun…dappled shade is good. I like the fact that I can drench the leaves when I water them in stead of having to be careful of furniture. Today I pot on my sansevieria which really WILL surprise you if you give it some SPACE. I bought mine in one of those doll-house size pots and every time I pot it on it seems to expand in front of my eyes. It’s weird, the way a room looks when you remove its plants…somehow WRONG. Rotter had bought a spider plant a couple of years ago in an attempt to cheer up his rather cell-like shower room. Because it’s not a room that I use often, the poor thing got sparse attention (and this, friends, is the PERFECT plant to give to anyone who doesn’t understand that plants need water). The thing grew and grew…positively thriving on his neglect and living, I presume, by absorbing the tiny droplets of steam in the air through its leaves. I divided it a few weeks ago, creating at least fifteen individual plants, most of which I have put into a victorian bowl and set next to my sofa. I LOVE this look. It reminds me of victorian photographs. Spider plant: RECOMMENDED

Friday

The first day of the holidays. I get up and haul myself on to the exercise bike, which feels monumental, like trying to run through treacle. But of course, after fifteen minutes life feels somehow manageable and I suddenly know exactly what I’m going to put in the empty sweet pea pot. The answer, of course, is another pelargonium. The two that I transferred to large pots in the spring have been just about the greatest triumph of the garden for me this year. And I’m not done yet. I gather another one up; it’s already in a pretty big pot, but has stopped flowering because it’s root bound by now. I ease it out of the terracotta, muss up the roots and plonk it unceremoniously in the old compost left by the sweet peas. This was pretty rich to begin with but is now little more than what you might call ‘growing media’…a mass of dirt, full of tiny roots and little more to recommend it. I water it in and wait a while, and then I feed it with liquid seaweed, and once I see buds I will swap to tomato food.

Tonight we go OUT! To a restaurant! With waiters! And delicious food! And OTHER PEOPLE! It feels like a dream…we sit and talk about things we don’t get around to talking about at home, and we eat soufflé and drink champagne. And then we walk through Soho and Fitzrovia, just for the pleasure of watching people out, and chatting, and living their lives. We realise that one of the things we’ve missed most over the past four months is people-watching. The gorgeous young in their twenties, entirely un-aware of how beautiful they are, the bag-lady cleaning the wheels of her trolley with a needle, the woman walking down Dean Street wearing a bikini, the Icelandic man sitting nearby, who told the waiter he was here on business, joined by a mystery blonde in a red dress fifteen minutes later, the tracksuited, wild-eyed junkies moving swiftly down Rathbone Place, the kissing couple on Charlotte Street with the Post Office Tower behind them. London, beautiful, dirty, joyful, vibrating, London: RECOMMENDED.

All the good things, dear friends

Do please email or message below, and as usual, do hit the heart and/or share this if you enjoyed it.

x Laetitia