Fox deterrents, seed sowing, hangovers, parenting courses, and that thing when you finish your BOOK!!! πΊπ½
Oh I have missed you all!
Welcome to any new friends here - You may have waited a couple of weeks for a letter, so thanks for sticking around!
Photos by Sabina Ruber from her and Clare Foster's book 'The Flower Garden' (see below for review)
I've been rather waylaid by book-finishing and daily things, and haven't had time to write anything except the stuff I'm contractually obliged to produce (not this!) But I HAVE been gardening. Last week was half term, and I'm patting myself on the back because I managed to sow some seeds with my kids and didn't end up a nervous heap on the floor! But here are the things I got up to this week.
Monday
It feels like summer and I'm unashamedly happy about that; it's bliss to have the light and the warmth so early in the year, and I'm not going to let worries about late frosts ruin any of that for me. I put all the cushions out and we immediately implement a meals-outside policy...while the sun shines! I sweep the path and remove a few plantings from the base of my trellis that just haven't worked (not their fault...I just neglected to water them in properly when I planted them...simple). It feels good to admit defeat and forgive myself for this. Funny how we avoid dealing with failure and let it fester there, as a visual reminder of our badness for weeks on end. Onwards.
Tuesday
It's HOT! I don't want you to think I'm a sun-worshipper or nuffink - it's just that end-of-winter thing... I go about my business in a t-shirt all day, starting with a publisher meeting - the one where you've delivered your manuscript and are biting your nails hoping they like it...they begin by saying they've never had to dig so deep for a meeting because it was exactly what they wanted and as close to 'finished' as it was possible for it to be. This was unbelievably wonderful to hear, and I share it because I wish to brag about it. Pure and simple. #sorrynotsorry. It's that thing of working your bottom off for a long time, on your own, agonising about whether you're getting it right, and then being told you have, and it's bloody wonderful. I skip home, make tea and spend five minutes gently teasing some couch grass from its squatting place.
Wednesday
Today is the annual Garden Press Event. I shlep round, my bag filling up with cards and memory sticks (and some lovely freebies, mostly for my children). This is a place where gardening-focused brands come to show off their new stuff (and old stuff) to the gardening press. I am very lowly gardening press, but I love what I do for the Times, because it does give me the opportunity to mention lots of stuff - new stuff, useful stuff, clever stuff, beautiful stuff - I'm always on the look out for it...so this thing is a good way to find lots of it. Today I find the loveliest garden boxes for children, and a new range of houseplant tools, and sustainable twine from sheep, (I'll be linking all of these soon...just too tired to link right now!) and a special collar for watering shrubs and trees, which the poor inventor man had named 'PlantDiaper' π Oh my god that made me laugh, and I had to spend half an hour with him with a digital thesaurus thinking up an acceptable name. This guy also happens to be the man behind Topbuxus Xentari (the still-not-authorised) bee-friendly answer to the box-tree caterpillar. He tells a tale of total woe at getting it licensed here in the UK, where it seems the powers that be, having already invested in bee-annihilating sprays, are dragging their feet. It's a scandal and one I'd like to investigate properly. Any thoughts please hit reply and talk to me about it? I then go to an 'after-party' (I know, so funny) hosted by Stihl, and I drink far too much prosecco and stay far too long, chatting to all my garden friends. Tomorrow morning I shall look in the mirror and find someone to blame for this folly. No gardening.
Thursday
As Bette Davis once said: "Growing old is not for sissies"...I have the mother of all hangovers. My small daughter looks at the pond and shouts 'frogspawn!' Sure enough there is a huge blob of it. Everything is suddenly better. I grab a watering can and make sure none of my containers are bone dry. I also dump quite a bit of water at the base of the trachelospermum jasminoides by the front door - it hasn't rained for so long and I can see the leaves are slightly droopy. Oops. I rush off to a taster for a parenting course. It's a group of bemused mums and one lone dad gathered around the dining table in the dug-out basement of a palatial house in Barnes. I prepare to be annoyed by each and every one of them, and then remember that we're all here because we love our children so much and they don't come with an operating manual and we are desperate to raise them with compassion and kindness and the minimum of shouting, to be confident, resilient people with great self-esteem and THAT'S BASICALLY IT. That's our WHY. There's nothing else. I have to like them now, dammit. It's a great course. I sign up.
Friday
It has rained and is now cold again. All my garden cushions, (which I mistakenly left out yesterday) are drying off next to the boilers. I go outside. The daphne is still pumping out its sweet scent, and I can see bulbs peeping up everywhere. I make a mental note to go and buy some horse manure and grab my secateurs to chop down the fluffy seed-heads of the anemone. My crabapple in the front has burst open with tiny bright green new growth. There are tantalising buds on the osmanthus and amelanchier. One poor lady frog is enduring what can only be described as serious harassment as I come in. The sound of their song is SO loud when it gets dark. I ask my daughter whether she thinks its a happy sound and she says "well, put it this way, I think we're going to have a LOT of frogs"
All the good things, dear friends, and rather more normal gardening service resuming next week.
x Laetitia
ps you might have missed:
How to deter foxes
Spring Container care
My book review of this wonderful tome: The Flower Garden by Clare Foster and Sabina Ruber
A video of me sowing cobaea scandens (some years back...but the method is still the same!)
A quick note to say that I will be migrating this list over to Mailchimp (Tinyletter's parent company) in the near future, as Tinyletter is rather letting me down. Obvs your email addresses will remain private and obvs you can totally unsubscribe at any time, just like you can here. xx