My top three perennials right now, picking sweet peas, rhubarb pie and ways with the hose.

Hello friends!

It’s been a hot one and my five minutes of gardening have honestly been just that…no more than 300 seconds before I start to bead up and the whole thing becomes NOT enjoyable. It’s during these boiling days that the hard-working perennials that need zero care or attention (or water, it seems) really start to earn their keep. I’ve listed my top three ‘good doers’ below (see Tuesday) and I’d urge anyone to include them in any scheme, not matter how small. Disclaimer: all of these plants self-seed with VERVE and PANACHE so if you don’t want plants that spread themselves around then perhaps think twice!

Monday

I cut sweet peas, I put out soft things to sit on, and I water. These three things form the backbone of my day. The pots of sweet peas went from three down to one over the course of last week. The two that I hastily planted up into pots that were uncomfortably small, were just not giving me enough flowers to justify their upkeep (see…I’m VERY unsentimental about these things) so I got rid or ‘let go’ as you might say it, if you wanted somehow to soften the blow of composting plants that you had sown, raised and overwintered) and it lifted my mood immeasurably. The one large container I have left is giving me a big fat bunch every other day. So I’m either cutting flowers off it or trimming off any emerging peas to keep it producing. Over the past weeks I have also discovered that the joy of giving a big bunch of sweet peas to SOMEONE ELSE trumps the joy of having them everywhere in the house. It sounds uncomfortably worthy and boasty, but it’s true, at least for me. I mean, there is an ACTUAL chemical rush of pleasure in handing over the bunch. Try it.

I am no longer ‘working’ in any real sense. I have stopped taking on any new work and I’m not doing any sponsored stuff on Instagram either. It wasn’t a conscious decision, more of a slow drip drip realisation that I couldn’t do it all properly, and that my priorities lie elsewhere at the moment, and, well, what am I actually trying to prove anyway? Somewhere inside, I am still tainted by vestiges of that old idea that it’s possible to ‘do it all’…that was the credo my generation were spewed out of university fully beliveing. Received, indoctrinated ‘wisdom’ is hard to unpick isn’t it? That we must all have fulfilling careers, AND children AND a life, oh, AND LET’S NOT FORGET ABOUT BEING THIN. Somehow, giving myself permission to down-tools, and let myself lean in to all the dull-but-essential domestic stuff without feeling cross about having to do it because I need the time to work, has made it all a bit less like drudgery. The laundry, in particular has become somehow enjoyable…the constant tidying, not so much.

Domino asks me if her daddy is my boyfriend. I reply that yes, he most certainly is. She says that I need another boyfriend, because it’s better to have two, like she does. (She has Raffie AND Felix. Raffie is good at ball games and Felix is good at dressing up games). I, on the other hand, only have Daddy. Must try harder. She is obsessed with birth, and we spend a long time looking at animals giving birth on the computer. My older two think it’s disgusting and run away but the five year old just can’t get enough.

Tuesday

I wake every morning more amazed at how the garden is fattening up. There are stars of the moment (erigeron, lychnis coronaria, alchemilla mollis) and then there is everything else, just growing and growing.

It just never gets old and I get a rush every time I go out and see something new. There is also the inevitable panic, which by the way is NORMAL! And it’s probably worth mentioning here that at this stage in the game there will be choices to be made (and yes, dreams to LET GO OF) if your garden is going to continue to provide you with joyousness. You may not get that big project done this year…you may have to accept that the tree you wanted to prune isn’t going to get its haircut. The promise that you made to yourself that you would, you REALLY REALLY WOULD tackle the perennial weeds little and often and PROPERLY this year might have to rest, unfulfilled. You might just have to do what you can, and keep a balance between the vision you had and the glory of this present reality. Because even though it may not have turned out like the vision you had in your head, it’s still growing and gorgeous and wonderful now isn’t it? For me I wanted to ‘do’ something more concrete with my flower beds…but somehow between early March and late June, that idea never even got out of my head and onto paper, let alone made its way to actual fruition. … I’ve been, err, a bit busy. But I haven’t done NOTHING either. The borders were weeded, the myosotis removed and the salvia put in eventually. And today, I’m adding to this with the rudbeckia we sowed a few moons ago at the beginning of lockdown. I water each plant carefully, willing each one to flourish.

It’s never too late to BEGIN though…. I try to do a little tiny bit of weeding every day…even if it’s just one weed. But even better if you can get the hoe out and spend five minutes eliminating teeny tiny seedlings before they take root properly. You don’t even have to dispose…just simply leave them to fry on the surface of the soil.

In this very dry hot weather, I use the hose with great caution, (apart from when I’m spraying my children, which doubles up as their bath time). If I can see that a particular shrub is suffering (usually a hydrangea) then I put the hose at the base of the plant and let it run for a few hours at the tiniest trickle.

The shaggy lawn is making me so happy. It’s not nearly as lush as when I did the same thing two years ago and I’m honestly not sure why that is, but it does mean that my lawn is actually green, and cool and perfect for these boiling hot days. I am grateful to my former self. I mow the outside of it which takes me a grand total of three minutes. At this point I would normally celebrate, smugly on social media but there is parenting to be done.

Wednesday

Children are all at school and although it’s a bit like being back to nursery hours (drop them off, have a coffee, pick them up) I spend five minutes clearing a bit more duck weed from the pool which has been an on-going project for a while now. I’m not sure it’s actually worth it, but it’s a mindless activity and, well, I don’t like thinking. I also grab my pruning saw and remove a few branches from my rapidly growing pittosporum tobira. The area beneath these two trees (which came with me in pots from my flat ten years ago) is the site of another unrealised ambition; I so wanted to create a shady nook beneath them, somewhere to sit and read and, well, NESTLE while I wait for the pergola to cover itself with the vines I have planted. I put the seating area in the part of the garden that gets the most afternoon and evening sun (as you do) but it is altogether TOO sunny for boiling hot days, and if it weren’t for the fact that my garden table is about to collapse, I would have moved it to the terrace beneath the apple tree. So this little area beneath the pittosporum looks highly attractive to me, as someone who hates to bake in the sun. The plan was to lift the canopy, put some pavers down and plonk a couple of chairs there. All it would take, I think, is a bit of determination and five minutes…but I am defeated, by the heat and an incredible urge to lie down. I remember being much younger, without children, and losing days and days to the sofa. Directionless and spoilt and so so self-absorbed. The things I could have DONE!

Thursday

Did anybody in the UK sleep last night? I doubt it. And now I have a full day ahead of me in 30 degree heat with three small people. I water the seedlings, newly planted or otherwise as early as possible with the watering can and the day seems to be spent in a constant push-me-pull-you state…we should go out…we should stay here…we shouldn’t be watching telly…we should be doing homeschooling…we should be running around...it’s so incredibly hot. In the end I pile them into the car and we spend a very happy hour in an enormous deserted supermarket, going up and down the aisles so as not to ‘miss’ anything. We come out with three lollies and (randomly) a frying pan, feeling much cooler and totally sane again. When we get home, neighbours come to the garden (which, after 4.30 is mostly in shade) and I spray all their children with water while we chat.

Back indoors, I use the evening watering time to tend to the houseplants. They need proper attention during this sweltering weather and a lot more water than we are used to lavishing on them. On boiling days my usual caution is thrown to the wind and I like to drench the plants outside (if I can move them) and from the top, as if they were receiving a shower of rain. I do this beneath my apple tree so as not to leave any plant prone to scorch, and by the end of the day they are ready to go back indoors, having received a jolly good drenching. Of course, you could leave them outside all night when it’s as hot as this.

Friday

Complete total and utter exhaustion follow a morning of school runs in the boiling heat, along with a desperate attempt at preparing myself for a quilt binding zoom class that I had completely forgotten I’d booked. Because days, and weeks and months…they MELD into one so they do. It is a truly marvellous lesson…exhausTIVE rather than exhausting and I feel enriched (and also pooped) by the end of it. I dash outside in the searing heat to cut a big bunch of sweet peas before it’s collection time for child number one, who tells me she has been reading a book called ‘Oliver’s vegetables’ and that she wants to make a rhubarb pie please and thank you. We stop at the supermarket where, miraculously, there is rhubarb and get home just before it’s time to pick up child number two (you get the picture…staggered drop-offs and pick-ups are keeping me busy. I get home with the third child, hoping that the first will have forgotten about making pie. It’s just too bally hot for pie, but she’s all over it like a rash. I chop rhubarb bad-temperedly and let her pour sugar liberally all over it and shove it in the oven ugh. I let the children camp out with screens while I water and pull some weeds in the shady bit of the garden. Then I remove them from the screens and spray them with the hose until they’re totally soaking. I love spraying children with water. It is one of the great joys of my life. I love the sheiks of laughter and the howling when they don’t like it or think I’ve cheated (spoiler…I HAVE.) I love making rainbows with the spray in the sun and suddenly changing the spray from lightest dusting to most lethal pistol-type shoot in the blink of an eye. I do it all with my thumb fingers on the end of the hose. I’ve had sprinklers but they always break (small children are utter thugs) and I’ve had special nozzles and attachments but they’re never as good as my finger.

I look over at the gaps in the border and consider, for a nanosecond, sowing some annuals (there’s still time, dear friends, if you fancy it)…I don’t…not because I don’t want annuals, but because I have enough on my plate. Take one thing away (one child, one worry, one un-answered email) and I’d probably do it, but not this week.

We eat the pie and it is a triumph of gargantuan proportions. Rhubarb, sugar, strawberries and a piece of jus-rol over the top. We all love it and give it a standing ovation and youngest basks in glory. She then remarks loudly that she thinks the rhubarb looks like ‘mummy’s pah-jy-nah when she’s having a baby’. Huge gaffaws of laugher and I make them all say ‘EPISIOTOMY’ twelve times and then go and brush their teeth. Naughty, NAUGHTY children.

All the good things to you dear friends

x Laetitia