Nicole Kidman, Mrs Ramsay, new garden additions and can we all please just relax now? 💋
Hello Friends!
I can hardly believe we are now well into June and we have ROSES...have you noticed? They're like, EVERYWHERE. The argyranthemum (above) are doing their marvellous thing, and oh the JOY of a cornflower... I sowed a small pot of them with one of my kids a few weeks back as part of a Mud n Bloom package and it has started blooming, right next to my candy pink daisies and I am beyond smitten. I realise that the pink really doesn't even EXIST unless it has cornflower blue next to it so I've put this in my gardening notes as a must for next year.
The sweepeas have also started blooming...always a joy, and I am eating home-grown salad on the regular now. If I sound smug that's because I just got through a week that feels like it was from hell even though it clearly wasn't. I need to write an enormous poster which says "YES, YOU WILL BE MORE EXHAUSTED THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE AT THE END OF THE WEEK...AND YES, IT WILL SURPRISE YOU, EVEN THOUGH IT SHOULDN'T" and stick it on my fridge...v odd to be befuddled by something that happens on the regular.
Anyway...
Here are my five minute forays for this week.
Monday
I am celebrating the end of half term with some GARDENING! Honestly, I know it's not very maternal but I literally feel like a new woman. I know I am not alone. I see it in the streets after drop-off every day; an army of women walking away from school or nursery, bike and scooter-less, their heads held that tiny bit higher; that nervous, quick-chewing energy from having to keep small people not just alive, but THRIVING, dissipated. That exquisite knowledge that for the next few hours their lives, their living spaces, their very bodies are blissfully, deliciously their own. I often think of this image. Sometimes I literally go home and flop on the sofa, staring out of the window. I used to be a bit embarrassed about this until a very dear friend told me that it is a PRECIOUS thing called 'BETA-STATE' in which some very large percentage of our creativity gets nourished. She's probably completely lying (I'm scared to google it incase it's not true) but I'm totally going with it. As I lie there, my eye is caught by the cobaea which I am trying to persuade to climb beneath the glass of my kitchen extension.
Like most plants, it's giving me the side eye and doing its own thing. It doesn't want to climb where I have carefully put supports; my feeling is that it doesn't want to be that close to the glass, so I pull out a bit of fishing line and suspend it between two of the supports, and drape some of the plant over it, so that it hangs much lower, but is going the way i want it to go. it's not a very good solution but it only takes three minutes. I know already that it's going to be one of those 'interim measures' that never morph into anything better.
Tuesday
My new garden cushions have arrived and I have to stop daughter from stealing them for her bedroom. They are made entirely out of recycled plastic bottles fished out of the sea, which is a great thing in itself, but when you add in the massive bonus that plastic never goes mouldy, or attracts moth, then you have my love and attention. I put them outside and wonder at myself for taking so long in treating the garden to proper cushions. The next step is new seat cushions but that's for next summer I think. I look over at all the plants remaining to be put in the flower beds and am devastated to discover about ten little salvias, nurtured from tiny plugs which have all wilted in the baking heat because I forgot to water them. I am really properly angry and sad about this and I wonder, if I plant them now, whether some of them will survive? They are rather beyond the wilted stage you see...they are desiccated. I plant them anyway, poor things and decide to forgive myself. It's June, and I'm coming to the conclusion that I need to cease and desist with the mammoth expectations I have for myself and the garden, and just try and enjoy it all. Whenever I picture the type of woman I'd LIKE to be...the type of MOTHER I'd like to be, I always see Mrs Ramsay, sitting there calmly whilst everyone scampers about around her. She and I are a world apart I fear, and to be quite honest, I read that book when I was about fifteen and can't even remember the story. She was probably massively hectic in a way I failed to grasp at that age. Anyway, I'd like to channel that SORT of idea this month....forever perhaps? I give the salvia a good drenching, and then I notice that a couple of my runner beans have been savagely eaten by snails. This is normal, and it's why I don't usually plant them until they are a certain stature, because they ALWAYS, always get attacked. The bottom leaves are pretty much always munched away to nothing, and if there is enough foliage above then they can usually weather this sort of assault. One of them has been cut clean away though, so I replace it with another, reserve plant (my last one) and hope this one makes it. If not, I have summer squash I can use instead. It's always good to have a plan B.
Wednesday
The builders are back for one last time to finish the little girl's room I have been making for my youngest daughter. If you weren't party to my previous newsletters you may not know the EXTREMELY interesting news that this building has been going on for what we might, through gritted teeth, call "a rather long time". This is both due to their penchant for cigarette breaks, and the fact that I have made a few mistakes during this project, including the addition (and subsequent removal) of two very pretty wall lights that are far too delicate and dangerous to be within reach of a four-year-old who likes to BOUNCE. I am girding myself up for making curtains (because I have completely run out of money), but for now, she is happy here.
I flutter my eyelashes at the builders and they agree to put up the mosaic mirror that I have been meaning to deal with for over a year now. It looks immediately at home and I am thrilled. I go out and check for dry containers, and pull out some bindweed that has sneakily got so big it has actually flowered...NAUGHTY. I also remove a load of couch grass - highly satisfying. I have a total triumph with supper today. It is chilli con carne, with half of the 'carne' bit replaced with yellow split peas. THEY LOVE IT. This is big, folks, because my children don't DO pulses. AWASH WITH PRIDE, friends....AWASH.
Thursday
There are days when things go as expected, and then there are days when the entire thing is one massive curve-ball. Today is one of those. I finish my writing work and put a toe out into the garden; I'll just do a quick five minute spruce before my daily thing of 'making-something-that-nobody-will-eat' when my phone pings with the news that my au pair can't pick up my children. The reasons are unimportant. The effect is catastrophic. The thing is, that in exactly the same way as Spanish houses aren't set up for cold weather, I am not set up for doing anything kid-related until tea time on a Thursday...It's that damn simple. I should possibly be more flexible, but I'm just not. I am the opposite. I am furious, and fury is not a great state to be in when you're dealing with children and their needs. I feel totally stabby and curse the fact that I have to be a grownup about it. Yes, it's probably the universe just giving me some much-needed practice and I ought to be ...what is that word?....GRATEFUL. *sicks in own mouth*. No gardening.
Friday
It rains and it rains and I couldn't be happier about it. Gardeners say they love rain because the garden is getting a drink (and that's true) but they usually leave out the sanctioned laziness that it brings; (Just saying). I water all the indoor plants, thinking that I must repot all my pilea plants, which are doing ridiculously well and outgrowing their pots. I have already given away a fair few of these and it looks like I'm going to have to do another round of pushing them out into new homes and bemused owners. If you've never owned a houseplant before then this is your winner. They have a wonderful way of forgiving you for forgetting about them, and when you ARE nice, they reward you by having babies which you can cut free of the mother and pot up to continue the chain of giving. Quite the loveliest things; I'd be quite happy with a house full of these and nothing else. I tear myself away and write a long overdue blog on my beloved battery-powered mower, which has basically changed my whole attitude to mowing. I then go to see someone about my hurting back and come away in about ten times more pain that I started with. Literally cannot bend down. Was fine before. Laugh at myself, put ice on my back and call it a week. In as much as you can call a garden 'done' then, come June, I would urge everyone to lean that way. You know why? Because if you don't then you'll keep on making faces at yourself and filling your diary with musts and oughts when really the only feasible, sensible idea is to lie on the grass with a glass of something nice to drink while the sun shines. This doesn't mean I don't do my five minutes; it's just that I'm no longer all about the project. Stuff that hasn't got done isn't really going to now...let's just relax a bit shall we?
xx Laetitia
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