Potting shed love, sowing parsley and how a broken washing machine is making me joyful
...also featuring my weeding method, and how to grow basil right now in your kitchen...
Hello friends! Storm Dennis is doing its soggy thing right now and I need to press ‘send’ quickly on this as I have the very important job to do of being a Lego assistant. A Lego assistant is where you need to find certain pieces, quickly in order to facilitate the creation. Lego assistants do it for love. They don’t get any of the glory and they couldn’t care less about the lego. Here are my five minute forays for this week
Monday
I dash out to make a start on something I know will take much more than five minutes, but that doesn’t scare me at all because I’ve been in this game long enough to know that anything can be achieved if I will only get on and begin it. The albatross in question is my potting shed, which is under a lean-to directly beneath the enormous sycamore of doom that dominates the bottom of my garden. The roof of this lean-to has an enormous hole in it, and consequently everything is not only leaf-covered, but also wet, and gross. There is not much I can do about the hole, except to cover it up with an old piece of plywood, which I do, and then I put my headphones on and begin the clearing. Many broken pots, rather a lot of almost-empty bags of different kinds of compost, and of course, LEAVES are my main nemesis here, and I remove all the broken terracotta, smashing it into smaller bits for crocks. I also fill several bags full of crispy brown leaves, wet them down and punch holes in the bags for leaf mould. Then I haul out all the remaining compost and mulch my beds with it. Some of it is bulb fibre, some of it is horse manure…there is even a bit of leftover ericaceous compost (from what?) that I scatter. I also empty some pots of summer things that have gone over. That’s enough. Half an hour and I’m almost finished here. Just sweeping tomorrow.
Tuesday
Today I am positively aching to go out and finish tidying my potting shed. I have been slapdash at best (I mean, this endeavour could easily have taken a lot longer if I’d been more fastidious) but I have other fish to fry, so a quick sweep, and some leaf-blowing to clear out those hard-to-reach corners, and I call it a day. Honestly, little and often is not always the best policy when it comes to keeping on top of things…I have had far more satisfaction from bustling in like Wonderwoman and cleaning it up in one go than I would ever have from keeping it ship-shape day-to-day.
Wednesday
I spend the morning at my publishers signing books and plotting how to get it in front of as many eyes as possible. Self promotion is never comfortable but it’s necessary, and I count my lucky stars that there are wonderful people helping me…people who know people who know people who *might* just be able to nudge my book in front of somebody who could make a difference to its life-expectancy. What also helps is pre-orders (and I know that many many of you have sweetly done this…thank you!) Do let me know if you pre-order my book, and send me a screen shot of your receipt, together with your address so that I can write you a love-note to thank you!
There are a lot of people wearing masks on the tube. It makes me panic and put my nose down and my scarf up. I spend a lot of time and energy resisting the urge to cough. Part of me thinks the mask-wearers are panicking needlessly. The other half (the hypochondriac asthmatic in me) is really rather freaked out by the spectre of an incurable virus that attacks the airways. Either way, I am deeply cognisant of those with conditions like cystic fibrosis, whose every outing, or experience of someone else’s cough or sneeze is basically a game of sick-roulette. I get home and realise I haven’t been breathing properly so I go to the garden and snip some daphne off my now rather substantial shrub, and bring it indoors and BREATHE THAT BLISS RIGHT IN. If you don’t have one in your life friends, I would very much urge you to make yourself the special gift of a daphne, and in particular Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’. After sarcococca (which I love because it is so un-fussy) it is my favourite winter scented shrub. The smell has a depth to it that makes it extra-special…there is strawberry in there, and something else deeply floral, but not headachy. It has a richness that I want to call WAXY, although I don’t know why I call it that. Anyway, do love yourself a little and try planting one. Once they’re established (and yes, it can take a good few years for a daphne to decide that it likes you) they’ll never fail to blow your socks off with that scent.
Thursday
The rain continues, so I sow some parsley. I use jiffy 7 pellets for these (peat-free of course), putting two seeds on the surface of each swollen pellet. If you’re using pots and compost just keep it peat-free and gritty. Cover the seeds with a sprinkling of perlite. I have a heated floor (I know, how utterly luxurious) so I just put the pellets in a small tray and keep them on the floor. I keep the tray covered with a clear plastic lid to keep things damp, and I make sure that nothing dries out. If you’re new to growing parsley from seed, know that germination is often erratic (it’s NOT your fault!) and can take up to six weeks. I keep things ticking over until I have a good root system and then pot the successful ones on, eventually planting them out in a big wide pot so I can have armfuls of parsley on tap. The other, perfectly acceptable option is of course to order or buy small parsley plants - much easier and just as satisfying…the important thing to avoid is the thing of NOT HAVING PARSLEY. Okay?
Friday
My washing machine is broken. This could have been a total disaster but actually it turns out to have been one of the most glorious things to happen to me in a long time. I put a message out on the street whatsapp and get showered with sweet invitations offering to do my washing. I have always loved my neighbours but never more than now; it feels like my childhood again when I used regularly to knock on neighbour’s doors asking for an egg for baking, or yes, if the children inside wanted to ride their bikes with me. I fantasise about asking whether anyone would mind if my children knocked on their doors, without warning, without it being a PLAY-DATE (awful word)…without it having been organised and diarised and squeezed of all its spontaneity by us grown-ups. I’m not sure what happened but I don’t remember my parents ever organising playtime with other children; I think we just used to knock on neighbour’s doors - is that right mum? (I know she reads this!) Anyway, my busybody social editor prevents me from asking this, for fear of it all being too much in one day, what with the laundry baskets, but I do resolve to cultivate at least some friendships where this could perhaps be the norm. And then there is the BLISS of OTHER PEOPLE’S LAUNDRY SETUP… It’s not what you think…I’m not a sucker for a pinterest-worthy laundry room, with labelled basket and detergent decanted into glass bottles (life is altogether too short)…but I really AM interested in whether there is gunk in your door seal, oh, and whether you are a SOFTENER person… utterly fascinating. I juggle motherhood with collecting a car from a service in Strawberry Hill (more trains, more masks, more coughing) most of the day and feel like I’m failing. It is St Valentine’s day and I manage to get treats for the children though (including three enormous rainbow coloured sour rolls which make the back of my tongue emit saliva just looking at them). There is also a lovely meeting with some neighbour gardeners, in which we plotted a future Front Garden Fest for the summer. We have visions of everyone putting a bird feeder in their front garden, and perhaps planting something bee-friendly, and of there being child-lead lemonade stalls, and seed swaps and the like. Good thoughts, and I am grateful to be surrounded by neighbours like these.
x Laetitia
ps you might have missed:
How to grow basil in your kitchen all year round
My weeding method - how I clear away weeds and other detritus without getting overwhelmed