The Five Minute Garden book! Compost care, leaf love stocking woe and my lovely new loo!
Hello friends!
Thank you for kindest loveliest messages and I am happy to report that about a week ago I got out of bed and for the first time in a long time it didn’t feel like the air was made of treacle! Hurrah for that, and for your patience. I have migrated this list to Substack on the advice of my wonderful friend Alice. I am hoping there will be fewer glitches with this in the future, and that you will forgive the changed source; this letter is the same as ever.
This will be my last newsletter this year, and I’m THRILLED to be able to share the news that my book can now be pre-ordered - just search for The Five Minute Garden on A*&@+n. I shall be shamelessly trying to plug it once everyone has had their last mince pie. I’m planning something a bit special for people who pre-order (pre-orders are the only way to make the ghastly Amazon algorithm glance in your direction, so sadly, they’re REALLY important). If you take a screenshot of your receipt and email or insta-message me with it, and your address, then you’ll get a treat from me for when it arrives on your doorstep!
Here are my five minute forays this week:
Monday
It’s time to revisit the bulb situation (which I have been ignoring fastidiously for the past few weeks). My bulbs are a mixture of gigantic alliums which were expensive but a necessary change after three years of enjoying the diminutive Allium sphaerocephalon. I love it to bits but I am feeling a need for something splash-making, and globemaster, however eyewateringly expensive, is just that something. These biggies are already in, grouped together snugly in three or four places for abundant effect rather than spread over the entire space. Had I earned a bit more this year I might have dispensed with tulips altogether and just had globemaster – they are so easy to plant in groups as they are so huge; all you need is a shovel and an area cleared of weeds and whatever else. No, it’s the tulips that are mocking me gently from the shed. They are a mixture of orange and pink and yes, it’s totally fine to put them in now, and all the way into January if it pleaseth you. I use a bulb-planter and a kneeler (a jolly good present duo for yourself once you’ve dealt with all the less important people in your life) and just get on with it. No over thinking…just remove a cylindrical clod of earth, throw your bulb in and press the button the release the earth over the top. If you’ve been a good swotty gardener you won’t have left a trace of bulbage behind you to attract squirrels and the like. Here is a thing I wrote a while ago on how to protect your bulbs from things that simply see them as a good source of carbs over winter and couldn’t care less about your flaars.
Anyway, I get most of the rest in today, and keep back a few for pots. I still haven’t winter-fied my terrace pots due to feeling glum but feel ready for the challenge now. I’m being VERY restrained with tulip displays this year and am formulating a plan (or shall we call it a shopping list?) to ‘go permanent’ with the rest of my large terrace pots. More on that in the new year.
Tuesday
My leaf mould situation this year can only be described as epic. I do make an effort to distribute a lot of fallen leaves at the backs of borders but even so, I already have five bags filled and the trees are not even half-way denuded. At this time of year it’s a daily sweep, (and all the garden action I’ve been able to manage of late) and once I’ve got myself out of the door and a pair of gloves on, it becomes one of those easy rituals that floods the brain with good chemicals. Here is my method for leaf-mould so it doesn’t become a chore and for the lawn I cannot recommend the enormous plastic rake more (it was given to me for a sponsored post by Gardena and has become one of my favourite tools ever) - the rake bit can be removed and split in two, to form a pair of huge claws that pick up all your leaves efficiently. Incidently, if you have a lot of leaves like me, then you could do worse that invest in a good leaf-blower. I reviewed a lot of cordless ones some time ago and they are all pretty good. I’ll put up a post on them next week.
I host the inaugural dinner for my newly informed book group. I have ZERO idea of how to do it and agonise a stupid amount over whether anyone will turn up. How ridiculous. I set the group up on a total whim six weeks ago, as a kind of way to force myself into the unknown. It is a JOY. We discuss a book called Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. It’s not my kind of thing at all and it’s been very good for me to read outside of my usual choices. Don’t get me wrong, I ADORE a murder, but this one did not do it for me…what IS glorious is to talk about something other than the usual (yes, children) and also not to have to BE anywhere. We eat daal from a recipe in one of Rukmini Ayer’s brilliant Roasting Tin books, (can't remember which one) which have been somewhat of a crutch in the last few months when my brain has stubbornly refused to be creative in the kitchen. There is laughter and goodness and I cannot wait for the next one.
Wednesday
I have been painting my downstairs loo all week. Like many things I start on a whim and find myself tied to the project in a desperate bid simply to finish. When we bought this house it had been newly done up with insurance money as the previous owner had set light to it when he fell asleep with a cheese toastie under the grill. The entire place had been painted in a colour only slightly paler than Bird’s Custard (do you remember bird’s custard, from the days when it was perfectly okay to eat stuff like that? When things didn’t have to be made from scratch or flecked with vanilla seeds, or 'recreated' by Heston? So we’ve been living with this colour in many rooms for many years. I don’t know what happened to persuade me that I had finally had enough…perhaps it was the discovery of a very kind, good, experienced electrician who came to fix something else. I asked him suddenly whether he wouldn’t put two orphaned wall lights that had been languishing in a cupboard for a year or more into the loo. He did, and I removed the overhead spotlights, and everything suddenly looked DEEPLY rosy and spectacular. I called my mother and asked her to dig up all the Jocasta Innes books she could muster. Do you remember her? From the time when everyone rag-rolled and sponged their walls and NOBODY didn’t have a stencilled frieze? I remember that time well. And I remember those books. I read them all, and then I quickly painted the whole room gold. Of course I should’ve stopped there, but couldn’t. I started stippling with orange, and then that was too orange so I put red over the top, and then that looked like the mumps so today I am adding more gold. I realise I need to stop. Soon. I have a yearning to varnish the entire room so that it gleams like lacquer, but my arm is tired, and I have finished Clover Stroud’s The Wild Other which feels timely as I am slowly navigating giving my ten year old her own head. The author sent me a message recently after I mentioned how inspired I was by her parenting. The message said "We must all love each-other and stop tidying up". No, you're crying. Her sister, Nell Gifford, the astonishing and brilliant founder of Gifford's Circus died, too young, a week ago.
No gardening.
Thursday
I vote and rush out into the garden with a niggling idea that I might mow the grass, more to rid the lawn of leaves than to do much chopping. It’s too wet of course, so I pull out the secateurs and remove the last of the sedum – gone all gross with frost. Beneath the fleshy stems are tantalising glaucous buds smiling up at me. I start chopping up the detritus to go in the compost. I own a hotbin which, to be honest, I struggle to get on with. It needs much coddling in the form of torn up egg boxes etc and I just can’t be arsed a lot of the time, so anything ‘wet’ that needs to go in often waits a while until I’ve built up enough ripped up card-board to mix it with. It DOES make awesome compost…really gorgeous crumbly stuff, so I’m not knocking it…it just takes rather more effort than I am really prepared to put in. I chop half the stuff and add it to the bin, fighting my way through the pittosporum to open the lid. I realise how much this has grown – two small bushes which came with me from my flat ten years ago have morphed into small trees, which I am gradually lifting to create an umbrella effect. I go and get my saw and chop some of the bottom branches which I put in a vase.
Eldest gets home unhungry. I am deeply suspicious (she is ALWAYS hungry) but ignore it, until I am woken at 10pm by the sound of sick (lots of it) hitting tiled floor. Why can they not reach the loo? Rotter gets home ten minutes after I have cleaned it all up and disinfected the whole house. I send him out for charcoal tablets as punishment. We name it #borovirus and hope we don’t catch it.
Friday
I let sick child watch her screen and sow some pea seeds, because I feel the need for some cholorophyll. I water the houseplants, not too much but enough to keep them happy. I realise I don’t have any paperwhites brewing this year. I go to the garden centre but they’ve run out and I take it as a sign that I need to accept I can’t do, or HAVE everything. My Instagram feed is awash with wreaths and Christmas trees, which typically makes me unwilling to share my own…such ridiculous behaviour. This year I have used the succulent wreath I made last year when I did a series of films for the RHS. It has fared really well in the garden all year (despite being entirely neglected) and I hoist it onto the door using an enormous satin ribbon. The tree also went up last week, decorated entirely by the children and sans lights, because we are going away and I couldn’t be bothered to unravel them. Later in the evening I stumble out of bed to find the contents of the children’s stockings (hidden in my wardrobe) have been very obviously rifled through. It’s my five year old, who is pretty much nocturnal, and it’s hard not to feel a bit devastated that she has ruined the dream for herself. Honestly friends, I cry a bit. I seriously consider starting again, but only for a nanosecond. We will spin a yarn about early delivery and hope she swallows it. I resolve to buy a padlock.
All the good things, always friends, and again, thank you for your kindness
xx Laetitia
ps you may have missed: