Pelargoniums, parties and parenting 🌱

Hello friends!

I hope your week was happy and glorious; I know (because I’m feeling it too) that holidays after so many weeks of lockdown parenting can feel like a bridge too far for many. One day, when my children have grown, the gaping chasm of the Summer Holidays won’t feel so wide. I know that. But right now, this is where we are, and I live moment to moment with as few plans as possible in order to keep things in a good place. There are some non-negotiables which do, I suppose, comprise some sort of ‘routine’…namely five minutes of gardening, a fair amount of outdoor time (rain or shine) and crucially, 90 minutes of ‘down-time’ (for which you may read SCREEN TIME) in the middle of the day. And a switch flicked in my brain this week which has had me hauling my sorry bottom onto the bike most mornings, so that twenty minutes later, sweaty and buzzing, I somehow feel more qualified to steer this ship. Here are my five minute forays for this week.

Monday

My bindweed campaign is bearing fruit. Five minutes a day, on top of my other gardening activities and the trick, I have found, is the same as for general weeding. DO NOT AVERT YOUR GAZE. If I look anywhere other than at the stems I am removing, I see more bindweed, and then my eyes skip still further, and reveal still MORE bindweed, and I am instantly discouraged and want to stamp my foot HARD and go inside. If I stay focused only on what I’m removing at that moment, the stuff gets dealt with slowly but surely. Most of my bindweed comes in at the boundaries; under the fences and yes, also walls. It will never be gone totally. I have accepted that.

At the weekend I turned the large pot that used to have my sweet peas in it into a new house for a pelargonium. This was one of a group of pelargoniums that I only repotted into medium sized pots in early spring; they flowered beautifully and almost immediately after being moved to a larger pot, but they are now busting out of their containers and refusing to flower any more. Every pelargonium I have ever had come from three plants that I bought many years ago from Fibrex nurseries. The varieties are Attar of Roses, Lady Plymouth (a gorgeous variegated thing), and Grey Lady Plymouth (which is, confusingly, less ‘grey’ than the variegated form). All of them have the deliciousest scented leaves and are incredibly easy to care for - perfect for the neglectful waterer (as I can sometimes be) and as if that weren’t enough, they can live indoors or out (although they aren’t cut out for a very harsh winter. Being in London, I do leave mine out in the garden, but I always take cuttings, just in case. Anyway, I have another large pot that needs an inhabitant. It has been full of the prettiest herb robert (another geranium type thing, and seen by most as a weed) - but it’s the best behaved most beautiful weed in the world, spreading politely and easy to pull out if you need to make space for something. It had populated this large pot and I have enjoyed it so much, but now it is turning russet tones…and I’m not quite ready for that on the terrace, so I take it out and start jabbing at the compost with a spade to break it up a bit so that I can put another pelargonium in it. The spade, of course, goes straight through the pot, leaving a huge hole dammit. I patch it with a plastic bag and carry on regardless, turning the pot around so as not to display the wound. The pelargonium looks instantly bigger…I find this so extraordinary - it’s like when you put a little girl in school uniform for the first time and tie up her hair and she suddenly looks five years older. Never not baulking. The pelargoniums may grow all they like but my children need to stop. I keep telling them just STOP. I’m convinced little fairies have them attached to stretching machines every night while we sleep. Most unnerving. And all the while, I am deteriorating…every morning something else hurts. My knees literally CRUNCH when I bend them and yes, I am probably shrinking, like Mrs Twit. My brain isn’t doing much growing either…A neighbour comes by to deliver something and asks me where we are going on holiday and I literally cannot remember the name of the bloody place. I start to panic and feel quite tearful as I grasp for the name of the area and have to say, apologetically, that I literally have no idea. She smiles kindly. Oh God.

Tuesday

I am deeply in love with my petunias. They got planted after I dashed into a deserted big shed about a month ago on a complete whim (I think to get away from my darling children). They weren’t really the right pink, and if there had been any calibrachoa I’d have gone for them instead, but the pink petunias were the only things on the shelf, so I snaffled two trays, got home and planted them on the terrace. They have done me proud; utterly, unspeakably, SHAMEFULLY out there and fabulous. I adore them.

I sweep up, and water, and do the bindweed dance, and I also make a list of ‘big stuff’ that needs doing in the garden which I will outsource. These things include removing the dead branch of a plum tree. I’m not sure what’s killing it but I suspect it’s ivy. So someone needs to get up there and do some ivy removal also. There is also my neighbour’s Vitis coignetiae. Ugh. It’s a lovely plant but it’s constantly threatening to engulf my hornbeams. Again, I don’t feel safe up a ladder, so this needs someone else. A large amount of clematis needs removing from my apple tree - it’s lovely but again, it needs keeping in check. And yes friends, I DO have a Rotter who’d be thrilled to be let loose in the garden with a chainsaw (I’m aware of this) but he’s very busy and, well, there will be a significant amount of ‘clearing up’ and trips to the dump involved…and we see him so little as it is. So yes, a list has been made, along with a phone call.

Wednesday

Today we are driving to Kent in order to get school uniform for eldest. A light on the dashboard starts flashing on the M25 and I realise I am going to have to put air in the tyres. I don’t think I’ve put air in tyres for over a decade. It’s not complicated, but it IS stressful because I can’t remember how to do it, and I don’t have any change, and ugh, the whole thing is making me feel USELESS because the tyre in question is on the wrong side of the machine and I can’t see the numbers on the screen thingy because I’m crouching down by the tyre and I can’t hear my child who is screaming the number out to me because we are right next to a MOTORWAY. I end up wasting three pounds and giving up. We drive on. Light flashing. Stupid car. If it didn’t have this stupid screen I’d never know the tyre pressure was wrong and I’d be perfectly happy. I drive even slower than usual…the sort of slow where people get cross with you and toot their horns and I can’t believe that I have morphed into one of these people who I used to swear at under my breath as I whizzed down the motorway at 90mph back and forth to Scotland or Switzerland or wherever. It’s not ALL to do with precious cargo (although that’s a big part of it) …it’s more that the older I get, the more stressful it is to MOVE anywhere at speed. All that WEAVING in and out and indicating and getting in the lane that’s moving the fastest…I mean, WHY?

We return (many many £ lighter) and I immediately go out to my bindweed games. It’s only after removing three or four long stems, and my neck and back and arms and brain relax that I realise how much I dislike driving. I need a driver. Get me one. I need to keep up with weeding the borders - not that it shows from a distance, but there is quite a bit that needs attention when I’m up close. My children have done a real number on this bed with the enormous space hopper that was given to my middle child for his birthday. No shade is being thrown at space hoppers - I love them. They are wildly hilarious and VERY good exercise. I also rather enjoy a bright orange blob in the garden…it reminds me of learning about the old masters and they way they used to put a blob of bright red or orange at some point in the middle distance to make the painting more vibrant. You don’t need a space hopper I have to say; a clump of dandelions or calendula will do just as well in any garden. Anyway, the thing is that the hopper has now become a gigantic ball - it gets tossed from person to person, and it lands in flowerbeds, depcapitating many a plant and enraging me. Today I have had enough after I find five or six beautiful hydrangea paniculata inflorescences scattered over the lawn. I take a moment to breathe in their honey scent before marching inside and seeking revenge. The response is a muted, shoulder-shrugging ‘sorry’ with an eye-roll attached and I am incandescent. I march out into the garden and pick up the offending orange blob. I grab my hori hori knife and make as if to stab it. The children run out wailing at me to stop. They follow me, still wailing while I find a pair of pliers and yank out the plastic stopper, and they continue wailing as I put the thing on the floor, and rest my foot on it as the air rushes out. I am upset by the crying but, well, I feel like crying too. I tell my son that it’s only for a while…that I’ll let him blow it up again soon, soon, I promise. I know the reaction is over the top. I need to be more grownup. I feel evil. Perhaps I AM evil. I spend the rest of the day cuddling the children and reading books to them. Penance.

Thursday

Today I am doing dinner in the garden for old friends. I am suddenly gripped by the need to DO THINGS PROPERLY and I get my children to help me haul the dining table out onto the lawn. There is a table cloth, and I cook pretty food, and a proper pudding, and I am reminded of what it was like when I used to do this at least once a week in my twenties, when I was full of energy and there was nobody there asking for combinations of bread, cheese, ham and chocolate every fifteen minutes. It is awfully distracting, when one is deep in mid-cook, having suddenly to cook a cheese toasty. It is boring and it puts one off that lovely thing of taking a day to do slightly complex, relaxing, long-form cooking altogether. So I give them crisps today, and entirely ignore them, and I put out cushions and decorate the table with lemons, and search frantically for forks (why do we have so few forks?) and our friends come and they stay until midnight, and it is just glorious to be here, in the garden on a summer night, with candles and good wine, and with children running back and forth, and good friends. Golden. This is what our garden is for.

No gardening.

Friday

Much watering as usual this morning, and I am paying particular attention to the new clematis I planted a few weeks ago which both appear to be suffering rather from my neglect. Oh dear. I spend the morning scrubbing dried-on polenta off my le creuset. I should’ve soaked the bastard but, well, I went straight to bed without any tidying up last night….JUST LIKE OLDEN TIMES! The children are still fast asleep at 9am which is unheard of…we need more parties in our lives. Party clean-up takes me a good two hours, after which I hose down the terrace for good measure. I sound like a broken record but I wish it would rain. I just wish it would. The pond is about a cm deep and there are still tadpoles trying to morph into froglets. I worry about them. And the lawn could do with a few drops too. I drop a load of old gerbil bedding into the compost bin and give it a good mix, and I pick some flowers for the house. Geranium (Orion is the one I have), some lychnis coronaria (bright pink of course) alchemilla mollis, calendula, and mexican daisy. Jam jar. Done. The cobaea scandens I sowed in March are now right to the top of the trellis and spreading by the minute. I love this plant SO much and I’m making a point of keeping it properly watered (it’s in a pot on my terrace). There is also a cobaea in another pot that I thought had died but which I started watering again when I noticed a tiny new shoot of hope at its base. I cut out the crispy old stems and this plant has caught up with the new one, so that now I have not one but two pots of cobaea scandens flanking the little table on my terrace. The flowers will appear soon, no doubt, and they’ll be joined by the morning glory (also sown earlier in the year and also being grown in a pot). This area, which used to be a dumping ground, is now starting to come to fruition. I love gardening.

I climb upstairs to find my daughter scrolling through tiktok and confiscate her phone, in response to which there is one almighty howling tantrum. I watch, as if from outside of my own body, listening to my out of body, flying self tell the real me to reach out and hug her. I obey, wincing at the noise, offering her my arms which she refuses, telling me I don’t understand, that I will never, ever understand, that there are things she just DOESN’T WANT TO TELL ME OK? All I can think of to do is get away from the deafening noise, to turn my back on it, and her because this is CRAZY, because I don’t remember EVER behaving like this. Because I can’t bear it. Because mothering this person is too hard. Because how dare she be so spoilt. Because what possible REASON could there be to make such a horrible noise? But not today. Today the me looking at the whole thing is saying I need to stay, and say I understand, and say I am here, and keep my arms held out. So that’s what I do. I stay. I don’t shut it down or walk away. I face the screaming, inconsolable, confused, un-edited, beautiful mess of my little girl who won’t let me console her, or touch her and I don’t move. I stay as she cries and tells me I don’t get it. I stay as she howls that she is sick of her brother and sister, that she is so angry at them that she wants to hurt them physically sometimes, that the injustice she feels at how they get away with like EVERYTHING MUM! is just too much to bear sometimes. It starts out as an act…just me, doing what other me is telling me to do, and then something happens and I am able to comprehend her deep frustration; to separate the clunky (bloody deafening) delivery from the message which is raw, and honest and not without merit. Apologies follow, and a commitment that in future I will be less quick to jump to conclusions and ‘blame’ her for things. And then, an exhausted elation as she puts her dear head on my knee and lets me stroke her hair, and I realise that I have just done something called ‘good parenting’ - you know the sort…the kind of parenting where the parent offers the child a safe and secure place to lose its shit and say what it needs to say without being squashed or told it is wrong…the kind of parenting where the parent is, in fact the PARENT rather than the child.

All the good things, dear friends,

x Laetitia