Rain, agapanthus, more rain, a birthday party, a larva cake, psychopathy...and what IS summer squash?
I'm a pluviophile so I've been totally okay this week...You?
Here are my five minute forays for this week:
Monday
The agapanthus is beginning its sneaky, happy fattening up process. I don't know why I am always blindsided by this happening...as if I didn't know I had planted the things. The usual state of things revolves around the idea that I have exceeded my limitations and that basically it (insert whatever 'it' is) will never work. Well, you know, the agapanthus thing has worked. It started working immediately and it continues to work. I had these planters made when we renovated the front of our house, and I planted agapanthus into them, along with a fair few echinacea. The echinacea indulged me for one season, but the agapanthus claimed the space as their own, shooting forth with those green-as-green strappy leaves and obliging me every year with lovely buds of blue joy. The buds are small (they'd prefer more sun I suspect) but they never fail, and I credit them with keeping my often crumbling self-respect solid and intact. The diminutive buds remind me that I need to feed my outdoor containers. Containers need to be fed, as they rely on you for all the goodness they can't access from the earth. I use liquid seaweed, unless something in actively in flower (when I use tomato food). I basically dunk a watering can into my bath-full of water and splosh in some feed. I don't measure it...life is too short...it's just a splosh. I then give each put a jolly good dousing. I put this all on my instagram stories, reminding people to make sure that their containers are pre-watered, before they feed, so that a) the roots are in a fit state to absorb the nutrients and b) the feed doesn't just run out of the bottom of the pot. Loads of people get in touch to say they had never thought of this before and what a GREAT TIP it was (!), which is why I repeat it here (although I suspect YOU GUYS already knew that yeah?)
Tuesday
Today my small boy turns six, and it is confirmed to me that he is a very jolly good lovely boy indeed. He is the sort of boy who is totally delighted when something lovely happens, and smiles with every fibre of his being with happiness, and he is the sort of boy who is genuinely thrilled when things are given to him. Unlike his two sisters, he hasn't yet mastered the art of manipulation (indeed, he hasn't even dipped a TOE into that particular pool)...there is no ulterior motive with him...no cupboard love, just pure, unadulterated innocence, which makes my heart lurch with love at the sight of him. The only time he is ever cross is at the various injustices visited on him by his sisters, and when I smother him with love (which can, I know, be rather irritating when you are busy). So his birthday is a total joy as you can imagine. He receives, (amongst other things) a really brilliant nature journal called The Nature Explorer's Scrapbook, from his grandparents (clever them) which I would covet, were it not for the fact that some stupid designer saw fit to put a lily beetle on the cover. This is a minor quibble though. It is all about making collections, and I am totally inspired. I cannot wait to find seeds with him, and stick them in the book. It almost makes me think I could be the mother I think I ought to be.
I'm doing some sponsored work with Gardena, who make lots of gardening products, including smart, automatic watering systems for when you want to be smart and automatic (or go on holiday) and I remove the contents of one of the boxes they've sent over to me with some trepidation, wondering if I'll ever actually be able to set the thing up. The instruction booklet is incomprehensible, so instead I do it from the picture on the outside of the box. It's a drip irrigation system for a flower bed, and I've put it at the base of the yew hedge in my tiny front garden.
To my surprise and delight it works perfectly and I retreat feeling more smug than I'd like to admit. I'll be blogging about it soon, but in the meantime here's my tiny front garden.
Wednesday
I spend the morning ticking off a very long list of things to do. I adore a to do list. Today I am on fire and do everything on the list (insert Beyonce emoji here)... I open another enormous box from Gardena. This time it has an irrigation system for pots inside it. I set it up and laugh at the fact that it has not stopped raining for what feels like weeks. The roses are rather dishevelled, but everything else is loving the downpour. The birds are particularly busy. I think they find things to eat more easily in the rain. Worms are wriggling, snails are inching, slugs are sitting there fatly, waiting to be picked off. It makes me want to squeal but there is a robin nesting in my shed. It gets in through the window which is permanently ajar, but it uses the door when I open it too. I don't know where the nest is yet (and that, my friends, is testament to how untidy my shed is) and I won't go nosing around for it either, but every time I go in there I listen for the sounds of babies, cheeping. My au pair is going on holiday, AGAIN. I cannot quite fathom how this has happened, but I'm pretty sure she's used up all her free holiday by now. I grimace at the thought of going back through my diary to verify this, but it's going to have to happen. So I'm help-less (but not helpless I hope) for the next week or so.
Thursday
Still not sick of the rain. I stay cosily indoors plotting just how on earth I can make an arch for my summer squash to climb up that will double up as something lovely to sit beneath. This type of obsessional wondering can take up hours if I'm not strict with myself. I start dreaming up ways with bamboo canes, tethered together. I had hoped that this problem (such as it is) would be solved by now, because way, WAY back some time last year, I commissioned a blacksmith to make me a pergola/gazebo type affair, up which I planned to grow summer squash in the first instance, and then oodles of jasmine and Rosa Cecile Brunner (do you know her?...she is the most magnificent climbing rose there is). ANYWAY, this blacksmith; first there was much illness, and then I gave him a call a couple of months ago, expecting the thing to be near completion, only to find out that he had not even started it, because I hadn't rung him to 'confirm' that the price he had given me was okay. I asked him why he hadn't just called me to ask for confirmation, and he said that he had felt insecure about doing so, because perhaps his price was too high, and that it had made him depressed. Sometimes I feel like I *might* be a little bit of a psychopath... It's not that I don't understand the FEELING...god knows I feel insecure about asking for money in exchange for my hard work, like, ALL THE TIME, but I give myself a pep talk and DO IT. If someone doesn't get back to me after I've given them a price, I do the big gulpy thing and follow up, because (like me) they're probably overrun by admin and have forgotten to get back to me. Sometimes, when people are talking to me about how sad they are about certain stuff, my mind literally starts to wander, towards, say, MY NEXT MEAL. Even my children, if they're being drama queens, get rather short shrift. I think this lack of empathy is probably fuelled by deep jealousy, because I have to be a grownup. I WILL NEVER NOT BE CROSS ABOUT HAVING TO BE A GROWNUP. Back to squash though..., I think at this juncture it might be useful to define 'summer squash'. Summer squash are basically courgettes okay? They're best eaten when the skin is soft. Winter squash are more suited to a longer time hanging with the vine, so their skin is hard by the time they are harvested. Courgettes are summer squash. Pumpkins are winter squash. All pumpkins are squashes but not all squashes are pumpkins. If I were to explain it in a phrase, I'd call summer and winter squash a 'variation on a theme'. Does that make sense? Probably not (I've had wine). A lot of them climb most gorgeously and I used to let them trail around on the ground, particularly in bits of earth I didn't know what to do with, but now I want that vertical thing happening and I have no STRUCTURE. So yeah, the only gardening that happened today was in my head.
Friday
I don't care. I don't care. It's raining (I love rain) and I'm going out to do some gardening because it makes me feel good. I weed (and weeding friends, is a total JOY when it's wet...things come loose so easily). I use a Hori hori knife from Japeto tools for this weeding lark. It doubles up as a knife with its serrated edge, which is a boon when it's wet and time is of the essence. The grass is long, and that's okay. I'm hosting twenty or so 6 year olds (and their grownups) tomorrow for my small boy's birthday party and I haven't had a chance to mow yet. I'm praying for a dry day, otherwise they'll be in my house and I'll have to unclench beyond my known capabilities. Oh god I WISH I were a chilled out person. I have a neighbour who is chilled out. She is also the person in my street that I know the least well. Do we think the two things may PERHAPS be correlated friends? (Or is she ACTUALLY cool?)
I don't 'do' gardening clothes. It's not an affectation, I swear...it's just practical. I get dressed in the morning and don't have time to get UNDRESSED and into something called 'gardening clothes'. So I end up with grubby knees which is okay because I am wearing black. I am very pleased thank you very much with what's happening on the terrace, thanks to my foresight in planting a load of daisies in pots (as per usual). These ones though, are the most delicious pink you could possibly want and I am smitten.
I take masses of photographs, not one of which turns out to have been in focus. Am I losing my sight? This is highly unnerving. I decide that it's the perfect excuse never to use an SLR again and stick to my iPhone in future. I deadhead where I can, and mourn the demise of my one (amazing) peony which is having the most marvellous, delicious death you could possibly ask for. I make a little posy from the neighbour's honeysuckle, a couple of gone-over roses and some other stuff. I should probably do this more. I imagine I will when I am older, and sans toddlers, but for now I have a watermelon turtle to carve for my little prince, not to mention a volcano cake to make, so that's the end of my five minutes.
And here's the Saturday larking...and THIS, is why I garden. We poured an enormous jug of boiling hot jam 'larva' into the crater at the top of that cake, and it oozed its merry way down and everyone got very sticky, and then I took out the hose and everyone got properly wet. The screams were deafening. My happiness was complete.
xx Laetitia