Dahlia duvets, more chopping, indoor gardening, and The Mental Load.💚
Hello friends!
It's been a bit of a week - this letter is a bit kid-heavy, but here, for what it's worth, are my five minute forays.
Monday
I am in mourning. My au pair has left. Not only has she left...she has also gone skiing in Vail on her way back home *spits blood with utter jealousy*. I wake this morning knowing I'm going to have to get to grips with all the stuff she used to do.... I am going to have to remember which days are PE days, and when people are going on school trips, and which day is book change day. I am also going to have to pick EVERYONE up from school and deal with playdates, and make sure ALL of them get to clubs, and put them in baths, and brush their teeth. I realise this makes me sound like I do nothing for my children, but in fact that's not the case...I'm here ALL the time...I run the show..., it's just that when you have someone doing it with you, you spread that load, and with two heads (one of which is not ravaged from getting up every night for ten years) the onus is rather lighter, and you work at getting it right together, and it doesn't feel so panic-stricken, and LONELY. So I manage to get out into the garden today, head fizzing with where I have to be next. It's a bit nippy to say the least. I do a cursory tidy of the shed. I finally get around to dusting the compost off my dahlia tubers and put them to bed, in the kind of compost that sticks together momentarily when you squeeze it, but then breaks apart a nano-second later, leaving your hands clean...that's the sort of 'moist' they want over the winter. One of them is still rather damp and I don't hold out much hope for it. I mull over the idea of going big with the dahlias this year. I mean, REALLY BIG. I've been obsessed with this man on youtube and his flipping BONKERS dahlia garden, and the fact that he doesn't even bother to put the dead heads in a vase...makes me laugh...he's not interested in having flowers really is he...he wants BIG and BEST. That's his crack. I love him for being so straight with the world. This video in particular, tickles me, for its production values alone.
Tuesday
I continue to chop bits off my apple tree, slowly but surely, following this method here. I'm terrified of shocking the tree. I love it so much and I want to be caring and gentle. Every so often I get a lump in my throat, wondering if it'll die...and then I'll just be left with a hole in my terrace. The Horror. It's a glass half empty viewpoint engendered by lack of any discernible OTHER to assist with life admin. Before you write to me asking where my Rotter is in this mix, then I think I've already said in this letter that I messed up royally when it came to letting him share the mental load of parenthood when we began on this journey ten years ago...actively pushing him away rather than letting him do it, and do it HIS way. Surprise surprise...he now needs a list of things to do in order to 'help' me, because I never let him help in the first place. It's a complex thing, but it's also a common thing. THIS (which you've probably seen) sums it up perfectly. I'd need another ten years, with him at home full time, to get us both on an equal footing with the mental load of this household. He'd need to quit his job etc etc. So instead we divide our labour, which is just about fine during term time, but holidays can be a problem...etc, etc... A GREAT segue to the fact that I have just taken delivery of a chainsaw on a stick (make of that what you will). Another gift from the delightful people at Stihl, who I think are bonkers for letting me in the same room as one of these, and frankly I am terrified looking at it, but like the mini chainsaw I tried out last week, this one feels exactly like holding an electric toothbrush (although marginally heavier) and I chop three or four large watershoots off with it, easily and quickly. An excellent thing which I am very glad to have in my armoury, because I loathe going up ladders. It feels horribly wobbly and all I can think about is who on EARTH will make sure my children's teeth are brushed if I fall off and die. 🤷♀️
Wednesday.
It's really cold now. The agapanthus and euphorbia mellifera are doing that thing of going all limp and sad, only to perk up as the weather warms up slightly in the afternoon. My youngest does this when I ask her to do something boring like put on her shoes...she falls down in a heap and tells me that her body hurts, and she can't possibly...I KNOW DARLING...SAME! Well, also same with the agapanthus. I come indoors and water all my houseplants which are now dealing with a suitably tropical level of heat inside. I wipe the leaves, and tinker around. I'm calling that gardening.
Thursday.
It's raining, slow, freezing rain...almost snow. I'm not even going to attempt any outside endeavours. Instead I rush out and find a suitably sized plastic pot to put my philodendron into. It's been languishing in a teeny tiny pot for months, and it's growing so beautifully regardless. Last night as I was wiping baked beans off the floor I thought "what would it do if I actually gave it a little more room?" Duh! So that's what's going on today. I mix some multi-purpose compost with some perlite and some leaf-mould (because this plant comes from the rainforest, which is basically leaf-mould city) and I put it on the shelf just above my sink. Pretty low-light, but lots of indirect. This position gives it the potential to trail around, which I like. I put this little exercise on my instagram stories and some people tell me they think the plant is actually a monstera. I'm cool with that. It can be whatever it wants to be. And once again, I'm reminded that this is the attitude I really must take more often with my children.
Friday.
It is suddenly warm - very unnerving and, well, HOT - because of course I have been wearing my warmest coat, and now suddenly I am bloody boiling. No gardening happens, but we do go outside, because I have given my son (who is rather dirt-phobic, and rules-obsessed) this journal, which seems to appeal to his innate sense of following instructions, and it has lots of stuff in it like "find some mud and smear it here". So here we are, on our haunches, smearing mud on a page of this book, and every few seconds he says "Please mummy can I go wash my hands now?" and I say "Come now, just a bit more mud on THAT bit there yes?" and he says "okay mamma" as if I were a child and he were indulging me. I am completely unsure about whether I should even bother doing this ....until I start to smell the earth, and it's good. And the sarcococca is pumping out good smells too. We stand there with our hands awkwardly outstretched, covered in compost, sniffing the air. He looks at me and says "I've had enough now" and we go in to scrub our nails. No gardening.
All the good things, always to you my dear friends.
xx Laetitia
ps some stuff you might have missed:
How to get a carpet of snowdrops, even in a pot
How I'm pruning my apple tree this winter
Daily posts on instagram
You can find my books here and here (Sweet Peas for Summer is a bargain right now at only £2.99!)
Do you Pinterest? Is that even a verb? Anyway, I love it and you can find me here
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