Sweet peas for summer πππ
Hello friends!
Well that was intense! If you're in the UK you'll either be mourning or celebrating the departure of the snow. If you're into gardening, then you'll possibly be of the former persuasion. I'm unapologetically thrilled, and let's just leave it at that, mmmkay?
My five minute gardening forays this week
Monday: The Beast from the East has receded. I honestly want to strip off and run around in the streets hugging ALL OF THE PEOPLE (I don't, but the thought that I might pop open a bottle of champagne does cross my mind, at NINE THIRTY in the morning). Again, I don't but that's only because I don't have any champagne in the house. A constant stream of water is cascading off our glass roof as I write, and about an hour ago, a colossal horizontal column of ice crashed down from said gently sloping roof, and directly onto my potted crocuses, and my garlic, squishing some of them to oblivion. I care not. I am just overwhelmed with relief that I no longer have to kit my children out in SKI gear before we leave the house. Instead of drinking champagne I go out and water all my pots, hoping to mitigate any desiccation from the big freeze. I can smell Spring.
Tuesday: I spend the entire morning recording a podcast with the fabulous James Alexander-Sinclair. If you know me, you'll know that tech is not my forte, and, well let's just say, my hand needs holding when it comes to making any computer do my bidding. I'm very lucky to have Andrew O'Brien on the bridge of this ship with me, but that didn't stop me from telling James that he didn't need to wear headphones when actually he DID, so the rest of the day was spent fretting about whether any of the recording was useable. Luckily all was well, and you can hear the podcast here or in iTunes right now. Do please let us know what you think, and if you're feeling generous, please give us a rating on iTunes so that the algorithm will see fit to put us in front of more people who might enjoy it.
Wednesday: It has been one of those days where things have got on top of me entirely. One of those days where I've tried to do everything at once and ended up snapping at my little ones in the process. I want to curl up in bed, but instead, and probably because of this lovely newsletter, I go out, pick up my kneeler and hori hori knife, and pick a patch. The one nearest the shed door. The smallest bed. It has couch grass emerging, and the sedum has not yet been cut back. I remove the couch grass. I smell the earth. I see tiny buds emerging all the way up the old stems of the sedum. I remove the seed heads. The detritus is pretty. I put it over my hedgehog house (no hedgehogs in there yet, but I live in hope). I go inside feeling lifted. I am nicer to my children. This is why I garden.
Thursday: I find a vast mound of frogspawn in the pool. And three frog couples, mating. In honour of this I dash out, find three large plastic pots, fill them with multi-purpose compost and plant the dahlia tubers that have been languishing in a box for two weeks, waiting for the awful weather to pass. My dahlia experience is sparse to say the least (I used to grow them when I gardened on a balcony) but had ignored them for many years since...I know not why. It was Sarah Raven, of course, who inspired me to dahlia myself up again, with her ever-inspiring (and deeply dangerous-to-your-wallet catalogue. The tubers are a bit puny, but it is Spring, and I'm happy, so I don't care. I plan to grow these in pots, and then if they behave themselves, I'll take some cuttings from them next year, and expand the collection from there. I've bought three tubers from this collection, because I LOVE it when I don't have to choose.
Friday: I decide that today is the day that my poor sweet peas, which have languished for months on my terrace, overwatered when the rain came, underwatered when it didn't, bitten to bits by slugs and snails and battered by all the snow we had last week, would finally have their day of TLC. I've pinched them out twice now, because they've flopped over and grown elbows, and because they're tough little things, they've prevailed so far, so I remove all my chard from the large pot which has been hosting this delicious green, and tip out all the compost. I mix this with lots of well-rotted horse manure, and put it back in the pot, and then I plant my sweet peas. With an hour to spare before pick-up, I chance a quick dash to Petersham, where they sell lovely pea-sticks, only to find that the delivery hasn't happened yet, and that I must wait until next week, so until then the sweet peas are going to have to survive with only kebab sticks up which to climb. Despite the fact that they look a bit ridiculous, it feels delicious to have put them in lovely nutritious compost at last.
Let me know what you've been up to this week? Love to know...just hit reply and SPILL!!
All the good things, as ever
xx Laetitia
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