ESTHER'S BORING GARDEN BLOG

DIANA WANTS TO KNOW . . .

2012-01-23T09:17:00.001Z

Diana (at Elephant's Eye) wants to know what our 'signature' plants are - what we would put in if we had a new small space to turn into a garden.

I avoided the question. But she caught up with me on Blotanical.

The thing is, it's always been random what I plant - what I have to hand, what I have brought from elsewhere. Then I bung in plants which self-seed easily, then it goes wrong so I fiddle a bit, start again (sort of) but don't like to disturb plants which will die if I move them so I plant round them, however odd they look, then I feel odd if there's nothing to eat so I put vegetables here and there - so my signature is a muddle, not a plant!

There are always likely to be . . .

A nasturtium would not be
a bad signature. As Diana says, colour,
wildlife, flavour, looks after itself,
comes back each year.
It doesn't smell
- but I hope I don't either.

Nasturtiums

Marigolds (Calendula)

Honeysuckle

Tomatoes

Runner Beans

Granny's Bonnet (Aquilegia/Columbine)

Failed Parsley

Failed Radishes

Failed Basil

Mint

Weeds

Scented geranium wanders in and out of the house, depending on the season.

One can hardly have a garden without lavender.

I think I would probably have little white cyclamen in the list now - but that's not exactly a signature because this is the first place I've ever grown it.

My husband can hardly live without squashes for us to trip over.

And he likes to pick up seeds from trees so there will always be little sycamores, horse chestnuts and other random woodies in pots.

And we always have a stock of plants in pots to move with (for if ever we move) so there's an array of little-bay trees, cordylines and more honeysuckles.

And, depending on when we moved in, we would bung in loads of daffodils to come up in between and early. They wouldn't have to be special - common-or-garden bright yellow to pick and be cheerful. (Plus as many white ones as I could afford at the time because I have pretensions to elegance.)

We're missing out vegetables and tomatoes this year because other people will be living in our house in August and we can't expect them to water much.

Diana wanted twelve but you can reorganise my list in ways which bring out a different number each time so it will probably do. It can be wangled. (And why twelve?)

She wants colour. Yes.

Scent. Yes.

Texture. Yes.

Interest. Yes.

A garden . . . well, not exactly!

FREE TREES FOR SCHOOLS IN UK

2012-01-20T09:35:00.000Z

A PRESS BUCKET POST

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post about moving my Christmas tree to the garden of Holy Trinity School in Weymouth.

It's not so much a garden as a series of gardens - with a 'living classroom' (made of growing willow) a pond, an 'edible garden', a greenhouse, a quiet area, an Anderson shelter (!) . . . it's pretty good!

But Holy Trinity is not the only school with a special interest in gardening. Hopefully, it's something that's being re-kindled all over the place. The Royal Horticultural Society has a Campaign for School Gardening, already with 14, 885 members. By the time you click through to the site there may be more. (There's a counter in the sidebar.)

* * *

In June this year, the Queen will be celebrating her diamond jubilee. Mixed in with disputes about whether she should be given a new Royal Yacht as a present, charities and environmental groups are finding their own ways to mark the event.

The Woodland Trust is encouraging people to plant trees - six million if they can (though not each).

The Fields Trust is setting out to protect out-door recreational spaces - sports fields, woodland trails . . .

And, in collaboration with the company Trees and Hedging, the RHS Campaign for School Gardening is giving away 10,000 trees to schools.

Each school will be given bare-root saplings of five native trees:-

Field Maple - Acer campestre

Silver Birch - Betula pendula

Common Hornbeam - Carpinus betula

Crab Apple - Malus sylvestris

Wild Cherry or Bird Cherry - Prunus avium

but they need to register as members of the campaign first.

* * *

If you know of a UK school which might be interested - perhaps you might let it know?

And for the rest of us? The site is a little unwieldy but there's a lot there: what to do in your garden this month (here's January) a link to the BBC weather page (which could well be of interest to people outside the UK too (at present it has information about the impact of snow in Seattle - don't know why!)) . . ..

* * *

REMEMBER!

Schools have until February 29th to ask for the trees.

There are ten thousand trees - which means there are enough for two thousand schools but no more.

They need to join the Campaign for School Gardening first.

(To find out about Press Bucket Posts - Click HERE.)

(For more information about trees in the schools pack - CLICK HERE.)

Life Beyond Gardening.

There are new links in THE BOX.

WEDNESDAY WORD (NEVER MIND THE DAY) AND SOME INTERESTING PARAGRAPHS

2012-01-19T06:53:00.000Z

I was going to say

Hebdomader

because that's what I do on Wednesdays - say something.

It’s a good word, is it not? I’vecome across it in only one place - on a plaque beside a shiny black front door.(Though if it existed there, it probably exists elsewhere too. That door cannothave a monopoly on

Hebdomaders)

* * *

But today, when I should havebeen thinking of one word, I’ve been struck by the arrangement of others - sohere are some Wednesday words. All manner of extraordinary information anddelightful nonsense emerges when sentences are allowed to form. These are short paragraphs from books I have been reading today.

This is about how to solve theproblem of male aggression in densely populated trout farms. It comes from ‘Mendel’s Dwarf’ - a novel by Simon Mawer. (1997.)(I’m uncomfortable with his use of commas but if he wants to put them afterbrackets and before ‘but’s . . . well, I wouldn’t want anyone interfering withmy punctuation so I’ve left his alone.)

'You rear some female trout (XX of course), but you dose them withmale sex hormone. This turns them into males of a kind. They produce sperm, forexample. But genetically they remain XX, and so every sperm cell producedcontains an X chromosome. Using these 'males' as a source of sperm, everyfertilisation will be by an X sperm with an X egg. Every baby trout that these 'males' father (if you'll forgive the expression) will turn out female.'

That’s neat isn’t it? Don’t wantfights? Miss out males.

* * *

This is from ‘Gently Does It’ (1955) by Alan Hunter. The maidis coming into the room to be questioned by detectives investigating the murderof her employer. The housekeeper has already been interviewed. The chauffeur will be next. It’s that kind of story.

'Susan was a pretty, pert blonde girl with a tilted bra and anaccentuated behind. She wore a smile as a natural part of her equipment. Shehad a snub nose and dimples and a pleased expression, and had a generalsupercharged look, as though she was liable to burst out of her black dress andstockings into a fierce nudity.'

Isn’t that wonderful?

* * *

And finally, Aesop.

(Guess . . . somewhere around 580BC? - but this version is from 1884.)

'A Mouse, by an unlucky chance, formed an intimate acquaintance with afrog.'

What a sentence!

'The frog, one day, intent on mischief, bound the foot of the Mousetightly to his own.'

(As one does!)

'Thus joined together, the Frog led his friend toward the pool in whichhe lived, until he reached the very brink, when suddenly jumping in, he draggedthe Mouse in with him. The Frog enjoyed the water amazingly, and swam croakingabout as if he had done a meritorious action. The unhappy Mouse was soonsuffocated with the water, and his dead body floated about on the surface, tiedto the foot of the Frog.'

. . . I’ll not go on.

Everyone’s daft.

Absolutely everyone.

So all that’s left to say is

Hebdomader

P.S. Our Spanish Broom tree has split in the wind. It won't be mended. We've been to town and bought a new saw specially. It's very sad.

I HAVE NO INTEREST IN BIRDS

2012-01-16T08:48:00.001Z

Ihave no interest in birds.

Comparethem with plants.

Plantsare nearly all different. See a blackbird and, however beautiful it is, howeverwell it sings, I’ll only know it’s the same individual as yesterday if it’s inroughly the same place. And even that’s an assumption.

* * *

WhenI was eleven and changed schools, I tried to make friends with identical twins.I’d read books where twins were able to swap places and confuse people. I’dalways wished I could be a twin. I longed for someone who thought the same wayas me. That being impossible, being friends with twins was the nearest I coulddo. Maybe something of their twin-ness would rub off on me?

Theywere very nice girls but we had little in common. They spent their lunch timesin the school library pouring over books about birds. I tried to be interestedin birds too. Failed. We drifted apart. Not that we were ever close. They had theglory of twin-ness. Being ‘not-a-twin’ didn’t have the same wish-I-were-your-friendappeal. They had no reason to seek me out. And I wasn’t interested in birds.

** *

WhereI live, there are lots of Herring Gulls. Although the young birds look very differentfrom older birds, and teenage birds (in terms of development) look differentfrom both, I understand that even experts find it difficult to tell adult birdsapart - even males from females.

** *

Wedon’t get many birds in our garden. When I first lived here, starlings andblackbirds were enthusiastic leatherjacket eaters. I’d stand in the window andcount how many each could get in its beak. (Not for scientific reasons - I wassimply impressed.) There are sometimes tits - though I worry about them. Arethey eating grubs on the apple tree or stripping it of buds? Very occasionally,I’ve noticed a wren scurrying about on the ground - and recently a robin in thebay tree. (Though I doubt it will hang around once it knows I’ve nothing to dig).

* * *

Afew weeks ago, three blackbirds were braving cats daily. They liked the red cotoneaster berries. So, when I found the chocolate mint had been eaten to theground by sawfly larvae (I guess) and the nasturtium near it was gnawed to itsstem by . . . by something . . . I scrabbled around for dropped leaves and tuggedthem out from under the box edging, ruffled the surface of the earth, pulled itall onto the path, spread it out, sprinkled it with bird seed, decorated itwith contoneaster berries as a lure - and waited for birds to come and eat thepests. Not a sign. Not a wing. Not a beak.

Yesterdayafternoon, I listened to a bit of Gardener’s Question time on the radio. Theywere talking about Gooseberry Sawfly. The grubs are too bitter to eat so birdsdon’t touch them.

Bother.

Ducks are different. I like them.

Tweet

You can see sawfly and other disasters in my garden.
(Blooming Nuisances.)

A BLOG ASIDE

2012-01-12T17:17:00.000Z

I've been thinking.

Often, during the day, I email family members when I find something on the internet which I think will interest them specially. At other times I bookmark a page for myself - and the list is getting unwieldy.

So . . . I created a blog called The Box where I'll bung links I want not to forget. Then, I thought, maybe you might be interested in some of these links too - so I've made it open instead of closed, public instead of private. There won't be posts in the usual way of posts but, as each day goes by, I'll add anything which I think might have a place there - if I do.

Take a look if you like.

The Box

BORN TO BE WILD

2012-01-11T14:28:00.000Z

I once came upon myself by chance.

I was hunting around for something on the internet when - there I was! - being mentioned by someone I didn't know in a forum I hadn't heard of before and have lost track of since. She was saying she liked this blog because I laughed about having fits. No, not quite that . . Made light of . . . ? No. Can't get it right. But the point was clear. And, ever since, I've felt a responsibility to drop it in occasionally - mention that I've had a fit - keep it 'ordinary'. (Two first thing yesterday morning). It's my way of being supportive of the invisible readers with invisible disabilities who may, from time to time, be encouraged by . . . whatever it is that is encouraging.

I slept all day yesterday, having slept all the day before which is very annoying when the sun is shining and the sky is blue.

And it is blue. It shouldn't be. It's January. The birds are singing, there's not a cloud in sight, the moon was full in a clear sky earlier on, 63 varieties of wild plant are flowering in the streets of Cardiff because the weather is so mild and I'm sitting in bed. I'll write this. Then I'll lie down again.

And it's Wednesday.

My intention, on Wednesdays, is to say a word, a word that has a lovely sound, regardless of its meaning.

Today, though, it's the song 'Born to be Wild' which keeps banging around in my brain so that's what I'll say.

BORN TO BE WILD!

Even on my best days, no-one would guess it. I'm a bit sombre. A bit Puritanical. Not easily amused by amusing things. Yet those words

BORN TO BE WILD!

won't go away.

Inside . . . it's not that I want to be a rocker. Rather, I want to wander the earth. I'd like to walk all round it with someone towing a camper van behind so I could lie down safely whenever I needed a rest. That kind of wild - the out-there kind. (Not the 'out doors' kind. I'm not hey-ho or hearty. I wouldn't want to climb a cliff or carry a gun.)

So my song is inappropriate.

(And I don't know the rest of the words.)

MYSTERIES

2012-01-09T15:13:00.000Z

One of the nice things about living in a tip is that one is always coming across surprises.

Nearly all our shopping bags seem to have fallen into an invisible abyss. Ming found one with scraps of paper and random photographs stored inside and asked if he could use that. Of course. So he tipped out the rubble and went off to the library.

Things to sort - mostly to be re-cycled; scraps of paper with phone numbers, horticultural society newsletters from 2010, a couple of photographs I wouldn't like to have lost, a poem, a drawing, a picture of Van Gogh and a packet of seeds. Chinese Lanterns. Physalis alkekengi.

It's speckled and old, colour faded and, although it doesn't have a 'use by' date, I suspect the lot number code means it was packed in July 1997.

So, here are a range of mysteries.

Why do I have it?

I suspect I was given it.

Why did I not plant the seeds?

I expect because the plants (fruits? unripe fruits? leaves? stems? roots? just looking at them?)are poisonous. There were little people around at the time.

What are the leaves like?

It doesn't say on the packet.

This, I think, is remiss.

Most plants have leaves longer than flowers.

(In months, not necessarily in inches.)

(Some plants have pretty flowers but clumpy leaves. You need to know.)

There are roughly 110 seeds in the packet.

Would anyone want 110 Chinese Lantern plants?

(I imagine lining the paths with them.)

Will I grow some now?

Most of the family is big enough not to eat the garden - so, maybe.

I look at the instructions.

'Easy perennials.'

Good. I might have a go.

'Place seed on the surface of a good free draining, damp, seed compost and cover with a fine sprinkling of compost or vermiculite.'

(Bother. To me, 'easy grow' means scatter the seed directly onto the earth in the garden. At a push, I suppose it could include making a drill and filling it in.)

'Seal container inside a polythene bag and keep at 15 - 20C (59-68F) until after germination.'

(Bother. Seed trays in bags take space and wobble around and you have to keep an eye on them to make sure the seed doesn't get furry.) (Another bother. These seeds can be sown February to June or September to October. If I sow them now, keeping them above 15C will pose problems about where to put them. If I wait till June I'll forget about them - again.)

'until germination which can take 1 - 6 months.'

One to six months. One to six months!

That's not 'easy grow'! That's

'Oh, what's-this-dried-out-old -seed-tray-doing-on-top-of-the-kitchen-cupboard-when-we-are-reaching-down-for-the-big-casserole-next-Christmas-grow'.

Perhaps that's why they were in the shopping bag.

Right.

Tear up a few old envelopes.

Put the rest back in the shopping bag . . . oh, Ming's got it.

I wonder if it would matter if I just shoved the seeds and the unsorted scraps in an old box.

Now . . . where can I find an old box?

THE MISSING WORD

2012-01-04T19:06:00.002Z

There’s a word missing.

We know what a blog is . . . a site with a structure defined by date ratherthan by content.

And we know what a post is - a singlesubmission to that blog.

Well, that says a lot, doesn’tit!

Sometimes people call a ‘post’ a ‘blog’ whichis confusing but not surprising. The word ‘blog’ has its roots in ‘log’ and youcan ‘log a log in a log’. It’s irritating though (one of life’s little trials)because it isn’t always clear, when people say I like (or don’t like) your blog. . . whether they are talking about the blog itself or just one entry in it.

I’m risking being a really,really, real bore by going on about this because I want to draw attention to a wordwhich isn’t there, a word which doesn’t exist - a word for the collection ofblogs each individual forms into a virtual magazine of their own devising.

Some people will be specialistsand, for instance, might read only blogs about orchid growing, or lilies. Otherswill create a gardening magazine which ranges round plants and soils and toolsand seeds and places to visit; or gather articles about art, or politics. Yet otherswill create almost a Sunday supplement - a bit of gardening, a bit of art, somestories, pictures, politics and reviews. They might throw in a few onlinenewspaper articles too - material from sites which aren’t blogs. But, regardlessof how one reads, there’s no word for the self-created magazine one relies on for interest, entertainment, information and inspiration.

There are a few approximations - ‘ReadingList’, ‘Blog Roll’ - but I suspect that for many of us, there’s a much valuedcore, the magazine proper, which needs a word. Sometimes I write down a list ofthe blogs I want to pay special attention to, so I don’t get drawn off track. Some bloggers are better at replying to comments than others, oreliciting extra visits, and it’s easy to get sucked in. Fine. Indeed, this isexactly what some readers are looking for - a sense of common purpose andshared interests. But the big, popular blogs aren’t the only ones I like toread. I don’t want them to draw me away from interesting blogs with a lessefficient ‘pull’ or a less clearly defined or overlapping readership. And, sometimes, I find myself reading blogs because I sensethe writers will be sad if they don’t get lots of responses. Reading can becomea sort of charitable action. (That’s ok, but only in small doses.)

My self-created on-line magazineincludes non-gardening blogs like

Pearl, Why You Little

And

Apocalypse Now

And

The Idle Historian

And a blog I've only just discovered but which is full of wonderful things

Shakespeare's England - Everyday Life in Seventeenth Century London.

There’s

The Big Picture

from the Boston Globe

And NASA’s

Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Hermes'

19th and 20th Century Images

is a fascinating collection.

I make occasional forays into

The New Scientist

And

The Dorset Echo

In my gardening section . . . no. . . I’ll not tell you any from my inner core there . . . it might beundiplomatic! (Except that it took me a long while to realise the blogger at

Houston in Black and White

is none other than David at

Tropical Texana).

Kitty at

Into My Own

doesn’t postenough

but Mo at

Fresh Eyes on London

manages to publish wonderfully interesting and perceptive pictures every day.

I don’t want to give my full list- it’s long - but I do want a name for this magazine that exists only in myhead and on my computer. Do you have a name for yours?

THERE'S ALWAYS NEXT YEAR

2012-01-03T10:06:00.002Z

Karen at Artist’s Garden recentlyposted on ‘Time’.

Ever since, I’ve been thinkingabout it - which is, in part, because it was an interesting post and, in part,because I was thinking about it already; ever since I decided something wouldn’tmatter because I’d be able to do it / see it - can’t remember what it was ‘it’- ‘next year’.

It was the first time ‘next year’had seemed a short time to wait. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter ‘now’. Itfelt odd to feel this. I’m usually impatient. If something doesn’t germinate,doesn’t grow, gets eaten - I get upset, cross, go on about it, can’t let it go- as if something which doesn’t work ‘now’ never will; it’s gone wrong and that’sthe end of it - for ever.

I can remember where I wasstanding when this new feeling struck - by the blackcurrant bush - where I’dbeen pulling open curled, dead leaves to see what I take to be sawfly larvae. Idon’t think this ‘next year’ feeling was associated with them but that sensethat ‘next year is merely tomorrow’ was re-activated when, over the New Year, Iwas looking through pages of photographs from the last twelve months.

There were seedlings fromFebruary.

“February!” I thought. “Did Ireally have seedlings in February? That soon? I’d better get going!”

On to March.

“Flowers!” I thought. “Are therereally flowers in March? So soon! How come I’ve never noticed how earlyeverything is. How little time I need to wait till colour is restored.”

Perhaps, at this point, I should havepanicked, realised this is a clear sign I must be growing old. Instead, Iexperienced a wonderful sense of release and peace. If everything comes roundso quickly, anything which goes wrong now can be put right next year.

Karen has sent me seeds. Californiapoppies which vanished from my garden last summer can re-appear this - migrantgenerations from her garden in Wales.

I’ve last year’s fox-gloves stillin the ground, plus some little plants. The original packet said they were anannual variety but I treated them like biennials and they flowered a seasonafter sowing. (Taller than they were supposed to too.) Will they re-flower orare they specially short-lived after all? Should I have nurtured the seedlingsmore to be replacements? Don’t know and, in a way, don’t care. There’s alwaysnext year.

QUARRELLING AT CHRISTMAS

2011-12-24T05:40:00.002Z

Yesterday evening (the 23^rd)when we had sung our Advent hymn, blown out the Advent candles, recited ‘TheNight Before Christmas’ in unison (which was daft but a laugh) sung a fewcarols and turned off the lights . . . and we were all settling down for thenight . . . Worthing called from his bed.

I went to his room and stood inthe darkness.

“What?”

“Don’t let’s quarrel on ChristmasEve.”

“What?”

“Don’t let’s quarrel on ChristmasEve. We always do. Let’s not, this year.”

“I don’t remember quarrelling on ChristmasEve.”

“That’s because the quality ofthe making-up makes you forget.”

I thought back to that verymorning (which is now yesterday). Within ten seconds of going downstairs, Mingand Didcott were having a loud quarrel about a plug. A plug!

“We quarrel every day. Why shouldChristmas Eve be any different?”

“Just . . . try ?”

The kerfuffle about the plug hadbeen followed by the sound of the door to the garden. Ming had gone to sit.

If anyone sits in the quietcorner, they cannot be disturbed. Whether they have gone there to think or tonot-think, to read, write or day-dream - no-one may follow. You can go theretogether, take mugs of coffee or simply to sit . . . but, if you go there alone,you stay alone. When the children were little, it was a no-play zone. Even then(especially then!) it was a sit-still place.

If you are sitting somewherepleasant where you have no-one to quarrel with, you soon calm down. If there’sno-one to shout at, you stop shouting. If no-one’s with you - there’s no-one to shout at you. By the time you come back, life has moved on.

One of my big deal wishes for theworld is that architects, town planners, house builders, house-dividers,housing associations . . . all those who have responsibility for the physicalway we live . . . should understand the importance of gardens. Houses should allhave gardens. Flats should have balconies. Everyone should have somewhere quietto go. Everyone should have somewhere where they can see something grow. At thevery least, at the last pinch, there should be fixings for a window box.

At Christmas, I know we should bepraying for an end to poverty, to homelessness, to war. I want these thingstoo. BUT that doesn’t stop me putting it right at the top of my wish-list -that everyone should have a garden.

Happy Gardeningeveryone!

Happy Christmas!

P.S. There are photos of our quiet corner on Esther's Garden Notes.

NEWS IN THE NIGHT

2011-12-21T10:15:00.000Z

Thewoman reading the TV news isn’t wearing anything. Well, she has a neck, a bitof a glittery band down her front and short sleeves made from see-through greynetting. Whatever would Lord Reith have made of this? It must be the cuts. Youneed more cloth and more money to make evening dress for men than for women.

* * *

TheU.S.A. is running out of pharmaceuticals for executing people. A Russianfishing vessel has been holed by ice in the Antarctic. A report suggestsBritish police might use live ammunition to stop arsonists (if people riot again).It might be a frosty Christmas.

* * *

The leaves on myblackcurrant bush curled before they dropped. Come next year, I suspect it willbe attacked by grubs which were constructing their winter homes there.(Sawfly?)

* * *

I’ve collected morebaycorns than in any other year - not that I know what to do with them! Threeblackbirds in our garden spend an astonishing amount of time chasing each otherup and down along the garden wall. They don’t seem to be aggressive. Are theyhaving fun?

* * *

Exportsare falling in Japan. The price of rice is going up in Thailand because floods destroyedcrops. Demand for Sri Lankan tea is going down so the price is too - despite apoor crop yield. A good harvest in India means food there is getting cheaper.Police have raided Olympus’s HQ. A robin has found the seed I put beside thefern on the chimney pot.

* * *

Although it has rained alot recently, strong winds seem to have dried the drops as they fell. Someground is soggy. Some is dry. Clouds have picked out random flower pots towater while missing others. It’s confusing.

I shouldn’t havebothered with violas. Hardly any are flowering.

* * *

All my parcels areposted. Cards too. I’m horribly behind with reading the papers friends have writtenand sent to me for comment. I’m looking forward to Christmas Eve. That’s whenI’ll catch up and read them. By then, all things busy will either be done - ornot.

* * *

DavidCameron is visiting Afghanistan. A disconcerting number of families in Denverare being made homeless because breadwinners are loosing their jobs.

* * *

Theunder-dressed news-reader has gone for her tea-break (or to do whatever TVpresenters do during sports reports).

* * *

Chickensin Hong Kong will be slaughtered because two had bird flu.

With any luck, frost willkill sawfly the blackbirds leave. (If they are eating any!)

I wish I weren’t hoping forthe demise of fellow beings.

* * *

My news.

The world’s news.

My little world.

The big world outthere.

I’m glad my world isa little one.

To be trivial . . .it’s a privilege, a luxury.

We’ll have a happyChristmas - and hope you will too.

HAVING AN EASY TIME AND A VERY NICE CHRISTMAS

2011-12-16T09:15:00.002Z

I’m having a very nice Christmas.

Not that it’s Christmas yet; wedon’t decorate till the 24th so it’s very calm in our house - but there areChristmassy things under way.

What won’t be obvious

to most readers is that I’mposting (intermittently) from bed. Scheduling is handy. It means I can work inmy sleep.

Life stops and starts.

I rested a few days before

going to London, had a wonderfultime while there - walks by the Thames in the sun and the dark . . . newexperiences . . . interesting people. Even after we came home I had a littleburst of activity before, inevitably, I keeled over. We knew I would and factoredit in. We’d have an easy Christmas. One thing exchanged for another.

I’ve bought presents on line

for the first time and parcelshave been arriving for a fortnight - so I’ve been opening everyone else’spresents before they do, ready for wrapping and sending on. I hadn’t realisedhow exciting this would be. Several times a day, there’s a banging on the door.(Our bell’s broken.) More parcel deliveries. It’s like the old days before thePost Office gave up. Dickens would have loved it. I love it!

Another difference

is that we decided to buyChristmas cards this year instead of making them. I can’t remember when I lastdid this. In fact, I can’t remember EVER having bought Christmas cards! (ThoughI suppose I must have done . . . or, maybe . . . not.)

Making is expensive

and time consuming. Our Advent isusually marked with swathes of paper spread over every surface while paint driesand glue sets. There are generally a few false starts because designs rarely‘work’ first time and the floor and tables turn white with guillotine shavings.(Some years, it must be admitted, the results are better than others!) The easeof buying cards is like coming up for air. You just choose which ones, signthem, address them - and there you are! Done! We’ve even abandoned our usualpractice of writing personal letters to all our friends. This year, we simplysay ‘Love from us’ and that’s it! This has led to a spectacular (for us)achievement - we have written and sent something to everyone. Generally, wehave time only for one half of the alphabet, or (if we are feeling speciallyimaginative) the middle.

Yesterday, I got up,

parcel wrapped for the afternoon- and keeled over. (Life as a wan Edwardian maiden - sort of!) - which meansanother three days of walking slowly and stopping here and starting there. (Ieven slept in my clothes. Standing up to take them off was too much effort andI’d fallen asleep before I had time to wriggle out of them under the covers.)

This

(knowing that I won’t be up tofull muster for a few days) along with plans for friends who will be visitingat the weekend . . . means I had to whisper to my husband that I have been soconcentrating on things for the post, Ihave hardly anything for him . . .

So he’ll have fun buying his own presents-

and that, of course, will mean hehas a very happy Christmas too. He really will be able to say (with surprise,of course, because by the 25^th he’ll have forgotten all about it)‘How wonderful, these things are the things I’ve always wanted!’

IF ONLY THINGS WOULD LOOK AFTER THEMSELVES!

2011-12-15T08:00:00.000Z

One of my many bad attributes isthat I’m always hoping things will look after themselves. Whether it’shousework or gardening, I have such unreasonable faith in the un-boundedself-reliance of objects, I’m forever being surprised the hoovering hasn’t doneitself or the fence fetched a brush from the shed and painted itself over with anew water-proof coat (complete with sunscreen).

The little table and matchingchairs that the garden centre man sold us as ‘pre-rusted’ has continued in itsinexorable drive to ‘post’ everythingand, early last year, one of our benches collapsed. No-one was sitting on it.The back simply fell off all of a sudden. We heard it sigh and watched it keelover.

Summer came and went. Did I paintthe other bench? No. (Though I bought new gravel for it to put its feet on.)Did I pare the new rust from the rustwe were sold when we bought the table? No; I covered it with pots of plants -ones I wanted to keep an eye on - so it turned into a sort of glorified staging.That meant we couldn’t use it for meals outdoors . . . but . . .

There will come a time when mygarden furniture will die and I’ll hope for more. I’ll look sadly towards thespot where it used to be and hope my husband notices. And if ever any more doesarrive, I’ll give it a good talking to before I put it in place and explainhow, round here, things simply have to look after themselves . . .

* * *

(This post is supported byArgos)

ADESTE FIDELES

2011-12-14T11:10:00.002Z

ADESTE FIDELES!

Advent is odd. As we build towardsChristmas, we suddenly sing in Latin. For the rest of the year we p.s. and A.D.and p.m. out of habit. We rarely think ‘Oh, we’re speaking Latin!’ These abbreviationsare as near to English as anything else we say or write. Hit December - and we,those of us who sing carols, launch out with ‘Gaudate! Christus est natus’ ‘In Dulce Jubilo!’. and, and . . . .

ADESTE FIDELES!

Whether we understand them ornot, these fragments of an ancient language are cheerful and traditional and acomfortable connection not with the Romans but with . . . what do you think?Middle Ages perhaps? Not sure.

I’ve just asked someone who knowsmore Latin than I do whether ‘Adeste’ really means ‘Oh, come!’. She hesitated alittle, then said ‘approach’ might be better. I like that. I’ve tended to sing ‘Adeste’in a fairly aggressive sort of way. Bellowed it out as if I’m singing ‘Oy you!Come ’ere!’. But ‘approach’ . . .

The idea is that we are beinginvited to ‘approach’ a very little child.We should be whispering, not yelling. When I see a newly born baby, I’m alwaysa bit surprised, touched by awe (reverence even) as if being born and fresh tothe world is completely new to human experience.

* * *

But, on this blog, the WednesdayWord isn’t supposed to be about meaning - but sound detached from it. So . . .forget that gentle whisper that doesn’t wake a sleeping infant, try the wordsmerely as a sequence of noises - like saying ‘rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb’.

ADESTE

Bother! I’m shouting again! I’vesuddenly translated myself to Harry Potter world. It sounds like a spell. It’sdefinitely a command.

ADESTE!

I’ve tried putting the emphasison different syllables. But whatever I do, however I say it, I can’t rid it ofdrama. Even if I whisper it (which is difficult) that sense of urgency won’t goaway.

FIDELES

is morestraight forward. I can’t do much with that. In English, it’sthe same. Faithful’ is pretty bald as a word. It’s just ‘there’.

** *

For the firsttime this winter, when I went to open the curtains, I saw my breath. There wasa mild frost on the roofs in the street.

I don’t knowwhether the bulbs in my garden are meant to be coming up yet. They may regretit before long- but there they are. Pale green points in the earth. I peer atthem in surprise. ‘Look at these!’ I think, quietly to myself. ‘Already!’. Theyare new. I am in awe. It happens all the time, bulbs sending little spikes outof the ground. But if I invite anyone to see, I don’t shout

‘Oy!Come here!’

I don’t say ‘approach’either! But that kind of quiet reverence is there.

INSPIRATION - WHAT WILL MY NEW ROSE BE? - INSPIRED BY GARDEN MEDIA GUILD EVENT - THREE

2011-12-12T09:16:00.000Z

This is the third in a series of
posts inspired by the
Garden Media Guild Awards 2011
and the people I met
at the lunch in London
where winners were announced.
For the introduction to this series click HERE.

When I moved to this house, thegarden was bare. The builders had half heartedly laid turfs over part of it andleft them there to die, un-watered. That was it. Nothing more.

For a few years, I tried to growa lawn. Crane Flies misunderstood my intention and left me with leatherjacketsto babysit.

Blackbirds and starlings (plus, Ithink, the odd thrush or two) agreed to help out in teams and gathered up beakfullsof the disgusting, powdery brown maggots in relays but the lawn was lost;several times over.

I switched to nothing but plants (withpaths between). And I grew two big roses, a Rambling Rector and a Madame AlfredCarriere.

The Rambling Rector I loved. Itfilled a third of the garden with flowers. It filled much of the street withscent. It filled the roof of the shed with holes . . . and, earlier this year,with grief in my heart, I cut it down and paid a lot of money for a new roof.

Goodbye Madame Alfred Carrieretoo. I never really liked it. The blooms were too big, too floppy, tooephemeral and it kept reaching over the path where bikes should go - and had tobe hacked back whenever a wheelchair needed to go by.

The other day I came across anold snap-shot of my garden - my shed to be more specific - hiddenby roses and jasmine. The jasmine has gone too. I liked its leaves, couldn’tstand the scent. My heart went glug. My family didn’t like the garden when itwas a thorny jungle. But I did.

My regret was kindled further whenI met two people from David Austin Roses at the GMG Awards lunch. This chance meeting sent me back to thinking about roses and wondering what to do about re-junglifying my garden.

Over to you.

Are you able to recommend a whiteor cream or pale yellow rose that will grow in full sun and smell lovely andclamber over my newly renovated shed without wrecking it? (Don’t say ‘Plant itsomewhere else’. There isn’t anywhere else for a Rambler or a Climber to go.)

Are you able to recommend a creamor yellow rose that can be grown as a well behaved standard in a place which isin dull light all winter but, in the summer has shade till coffee time(mid-morning) and sun for the rest of the day?

Is there a cure for someone whodoesn’t like roses but who is missing the chaos they can make in a garden?

WHO'D BUY A TREE? (GARDEN MEDIA GUILD LUNCH - TWO)

2011-12-10T07:14:00.000Z

This is the second in a series of
posts inspired by the
Garden Media Guild Awards 2011
and the people I met
at the lunch in London
where winners were announced.
For the first in this series click HERE

In my garden is a Golden Bay - athree trunked tree as high as the eaves. It was twelve inches when it came tolive with me (if that) and when I moved, it moved too - so this is its secondhome.

It didn’t grow too fast at firstbut, once it got its roots into this garden - where the surface of the earth isbuilder wrecked and useless (but where there are the remains of a marsh deepdown) it has thrived. (Should be ‘thriven’.) And it has grown and grown andgrown. And it is still growing! I don’t know how tall it will grow but itappears to be accelerating. Maybe it will screech to a stop. Or not! Maybe wehave a Jack and the Beanstalk Bay.

Remember I mentioned that I satby a tree-seller at the GMG lunch? He sells cloud bonsais - giant bonsai treesthat look like tall sticks with pom-poms on them. (This isn’t his site - butyou can see the kind of thing here.) And he sells trees which will livein the entrance halls of large companies. And ready grown trees with which to createinstant landscapes.

* * *

When we were little, my brotherused to make false price labels and stick them to the undersides of Christmaspresents to give the impression he had spent more on them than he had. Weweren’t fooled. £100,000 would be a bit pricey for a book. But it really doescost thousands of pounds to buy a really big tree so, were I ever to buy one,I’d ask the grower to throw in a very durable price tag and I’d attach itdiscreetly to a twig - so it showed.

But would I want one?

Would I want a mature tree?

As someone who grows from seedsand cuttings, my first instinct was that I jolly well wouldn’t . . . and then Ithought . . . imagine having a huge landscape to fill; traditional Englishparkland; a valley protected by hills with a river running through; a ridge thatcan be seen from all the towns around; a micro-climate where exotics wouldflourish. What then?

It’s all very well planting anacorn but why wait till you’re dead till you see it as an oak?

And I’ve been dreaming myself agarden ever since; a massive one that covers acres.

One must take care, it seems, not to let dreams be limited by the size of one’s pockets. ‘I’ll buy a new rose,’ I think, or ‘Somedaffodil bulbs’. But why?

Why think small? What is the point of an imaginationif I can’t use it to re-design Dorset and fill it with wonderful trees?

(But I wouldn’t want to put atree in a hall. It might look good but I’d feel like a jailor - cruel.)

For a virtual tour of Europlant, click here.

NEW POST ON OTHER BLOG - GARDEN UNDER ASSAULT

2011-12-09T18:01:00.001Z

There's a new post on my other blog, Esther's Garden Notes.

This is how it begins:-

The weather is windy and warm.

We could do with frost.

I’m trying not to feel murderous, violent, cruel or vindictive but my garden is crawling with unwelcome wild-life.

Apart from an almost fully grown (but dead) rat . . . CONT.

To read more of 'The Garden is Under Assault' - click HERE.

WEDNESDAY WORD

2011-12-07T18:31:00.000Z

Porcine

Isn't it a wonderful word?

This is the first time I've ever written it down.

I've never needed it before.

I've never said it either.

I don't even know how I know it.

But isn't it a wonderful word?

Porcine

PRICING A FERN

2011-12-05T11:00:00.000Z

Time for a Chat

Having decided to buy a fewferns, I had to choose between small, vigorous and cheap or languid and expensivebut bigger. The first kind were at a garden centre we’d investigated the weekbefore. We’d have to go back if we wanted them. The larger ones were where wewere - tempting on staging, out in the rain and right under our cold wet noses.

It was frustrating. Once I’d gotall enthused with the idea of creating a green and ferny corner, I didn’t wantto go home with nothing. But there wasn’t time to visit two garden centres inone day so I bought the only expensive one which looked half worth having.(Well, it was fine. Green and frondy and interesting.)

But when I got home, I found myfern was more thoroughly root-bound than any plant I’d ever met. It took threedays of fiddling and shaking and bouncing up and down in a bowl of water totease out even a few strands from the solid, white, almost earthless blob thatcounted for a root system.

And while I disentangled, I founda separate fern. It was small but quite distinct; with its own, sound roots.I pulled it away and cut where it wouldn’t budge and planted it in a separatepot. Lovely.

I’m wanting more than one fern -though I’m not sure I wanted two the same. The one I’d bought cost more than I’dhoped - and now I’d added the extra pot which I wouldn’t have needed if I hadsimply thrown the spare away or had left it bunged in with an already congestedplant.

I’m unclear. Have I a bargain - asort of inadvertent buy one, get one free? In which case, I’ve done well. Orshould I add the price of potting-up the second to my initial outlay?

Maybe it doesn’t matter on asmall scale (indeed it doesn’t) but . . . but it’s the kind of thing I think ofas I pot on surprises and survey a garden which is filling up with plants for whichno-one I know has a use but which I can’t, simply can’t, throw away.

THE GARDEN MEDIA GUILD LUNCH - ONE - ONE OF MANY!

2011-12-03T10:33:00.001Z

I could write a book about theGarden Media Guild’s lunch. This is not an exaggeration. I could.

Not that this was a lunch. Thinkdinner - with posh food and helpful waiters. No-one was in evening dress (afterall, this was the middle of the day) but there were proper white table napkinsmade of real material. Don’t imagine a low murmur of polite conversation either.No-one was impolite but everyone was yelling. (At least at the beginning.) I’venever been anywhere noisier.

I’d expected to be bored. I’dsuspected I might be out of place. I came away happy and exhilarated. Theticket cost a fortune and there were train fares on top of that. Was it worththe expense? I don’t know. Am I glad I went. Yes. Will I go again? If I’m amillionaire by next autumn. (I’ll have to work harder on making my fortune!)

There were lots of bloggers there- or maybe I should say there were a few bloggers and lots of ‘people withblogs’. They aren’t the same. That’s one of the things to come back to. Nonethe less, I’m sure there will be a flurry of posts about who won awards so I’llleave that out too.

In fact, I’ll leave nearlyeverything for the moment, except to tell you who I sat with at our big, roundtable.

Next to me on one side was Sean James Cameron of the Horticultural Channel.

On the other was Mark Smith ofEuro Plants - a company which supplies large trees - right up to fully grown.

Next round were two people fromDavid Austin Roses, Jo Riley the marketing director and one of his colleagues.

Then there was Claire of ‘Claire’s Allotment’ - a gardening programme on Utube.

Someone from the garden centreworld sat next to her.

Then Sally Nex - who many readerswill know as The Constant Gardener.

and, beside her, sat horticulturalphotographer, Emma Duffield.

(Then back round to Sean.)

Imagine what conversations thatcould spark! Being seated far across the table from each other and not havingbeen supplied with megaphones to raise our voices above the clamour, ideas didn’texactly flow freely. None the less, to the extent that we did manage tocommunicate, it really was an inspiration to meet each one of them. We hadsurprisingly little in common - but that was part of the point.

That there is more to be said . .. well! You can imagine.

The only problem I hit (and thiswas embarrassing) - was that I couldn’t describe Esther’s Boring Garden Blog.

First, I was asked if it’s basedon organic gardening and floundered. It was the first of several moments when Ihad to confront what of course I know but hadn’t taken into account - that evenwhen you narrow the world to people who have this one important thing in common(an interest in growing plants) we don’t all see things the same way. I realisethis is a silly observation. None the less, it took me a moment to answer -doesn’t everyone garden organically?Of course they don’t! But I hadn’t been expected to be asked in a gatheringlike that! (Fool that I am!)

Then I was asked what it’s aboutabout. What is its speciality?

Oh help!

What is it about?

I realise now I should havedevised an answer in advance. After all, everyone else knew what they are doing- they sell trees and roses, make films and interview people. I explained howit began. That’s all clear and fine, even if a little bizarre - but what has it become? I know what belongs and whatdoesn’t but there’s no way of explaining it.

If anyone can help out - can tellme how to describe my own work, summarise the purpose of this blog, what theworld would be like without it (no, not that last one; it wouldn’t matter a jot)- I’d be grateful. Maybe I’ll go to the lunch next year. Maybe I won’t. But ifI do - I’ll need to know what I’m about by then.

If you'd like to join in the discussion about the
Roundabout Tree
on my other blog
Esther's Garden Notes,
click here.

Click here to see the list of award winners.

TAKING MY SHED TO TOWN

2011-11-29T17:58:00.000Z

If I had a car, I wouldn’t justleave it lying around in the street, I’d . . . I don’t know what I’d do with it- but I wouldn’t want to do that. Cars are awfully expensive - and some of themare quite beautiful. A bit like my laptop. I wouldn’t take it to town and put it down on a pavement somewhere, or abandon itin the kerb for a day, even if it did have a neat white line around it.

* * *

I could live in my shed. It isn’tlarge but I could lie down and still have space to put something at my head andsomething at my feet. There’s room for a path up the middle and a table or asofa on the other side. It has a double window and a loose box style door; thekind horses and ponies look over.

* * *

If I were to paint a white lineround it, with a few inches to spare, it would come out around the same shapeand size as a parking space.

* * *

People with metal rectangles onwheels can drive them to town and leave them there for a while, a day, or days. . . there are different rules for different places but, all over the land,special arrangements have been made to make this possible.

But if I were to put my shed onwheels and tow it to town and put it in one of the same spaces, buy a ticketand stick it on the window and go off shopping, someone would be bound tocomplain.

But it would be very useful.

When it’s coming up to Christmasand I have lots of bags to carry, I’d like to have somewhere to leave the heavyones. And while depositing them there, I’d like to make a cup of tea and checkmy emails and sit around for a bit.

I’d think I’d like to take myshed and spend a little time in the layby of a designated beauty spot. I’d sitand look at the view through my open door and, maybe, have a picnic.

* * *

It just doesn’t seem fair that peoplewith cars can bring them to town and leave them lying around all over the placewhen people with sheds - can’t.

RED BERRIES ON THE OTHER BLOG

2011-11-28T23:30:00.000Z

There's a new post on my other blog - Esther's Garden Notes.

This is how it begins . .

A blackbird has moved into our garden.

I think a blackbird and his wife are living in the bay tree. I've seen Mrs peeping out between its 'golden' leaves and Mr standing on a branch of our Roundabout Tree, eating its bright red berries. One every two seconds. Peck, gulp and it's gone. Then another. And another. It's surprising there are any left.

I know nothing . . .

To continue (and to see the berries) - click HERE

CAN'T WAIT TILL WEDNESDAY!

2011-11-27T11:40:00.001Z

I've just read the best word from all year. It comes almost at the end but it comes tops and I don't imagine another will top it before the end of December!

It's

Stickstoffüberschuss

and it means 'Nitrogen Surplus' (in German).

I know it's not a Wednesday but why should Wednesdays get all the words?

Can't wait till then so I'm posting it now"

Stickstoffüberschuss

And I'm busy on Wednesday. I'm going to the special lunch for the Garden Media Guild awards in London - where they praise some of the best garden writers, publishers, television and radio presenters specialising in gardening . . . and have a lunch and seem to hang around for most of the day. A bit daunting but . . .

Anyone else going? We can look out for each other!

CUTTING DOWN AND SELLING OFF

2011-11-25T09:21:00.000Z

A few months ago, there was a bigfuss when the Government decided to sell off large swathes of forest in England- not only commercial forests where pine trees are ranked in rows and croppedlike any other plant cut for sale but the Forest of Dean and ancient woodlandlike the New Forest were under threat too.

At first, it seemed an especiallyConservative move then we realised what some had known all along - that theLabour Government had been steadily selling the trees too when it was in power.

I’ve been reading ‘Framley Parsonage’ (1861) by Anthony Trollope. It’s not my favourite book for there’s a doomhanging over it right from the beginning when the young and affluent rectorfalls in with a bad lot.

One of the badnesses of the lotis that some of them are living the high life by passing debts on toothers - to men like the naive rector who, despite his comfortable living, isn’taffluent enough to support the profligacy of his ‘friends’.

And one of the ways we known theyare not to be trusted (even if it isn’t central to the story) is their attitudetowards trees. While Frank Gresham, the honourable hero of a previous book wisheshe could live long enough to see an oak tree grow . . . well, listen to this .. .

'There is an old forest, notaltogether belonging to the property, but attached to it, called the Chace ofChaldicotes. A portion of this forest comes up close behind the mansion, and ofitself gives a character and celebrity to the place. The Chace of Chalidcotes -the greater part of it, at least - is, as all the world knows, Crown property,and now, in these utilitarian days, is to be disforested.
'In former times, itwas a great forest, stretching half across the country, almost as far asSilverbridge; and there are bits of it, here and there, still to be seen atintervals throughout the whole distance; but the larger remaining portion,consisting of aged hollow oaks, centuries old, and wide-spreading witheredbeeches, stands in the two parishes of Chaldicotes and Uffley. People stillcome from afar to see the oaks of Chalidcotes, and to hear their feet rustleamong the thick autumn leaves. But they will soon come no longer. The giants ofpast ages are to give way to wheat and turnips; a ruthless Chancellor of theExchequer, disregarding old associations and rural beauty, requires moneyreturns from the lands; and the Chace of Chaldicotes is to vanish from theearth’s surface.'

Then, sometime later.

“ . . . "And so they’re going tocut down Chaldicotes Forest, are they, Mr Sowerby?” [The chief of thebaddies, the Duke of Omnium, is asking.]

“Well, I can’t tell you that. [We’re back to Mr Sowerby.] They are goingto disforest it. I have been ranger since I was twenty-two, and I don’t yetknow whether that means cutting down.”

“Not only cutting down, butrooting up,” said Mr Fothergill.

“It’s a murderous shame,” saidFrank Gresham; “and I will say one thing, I don’t think any but a Whig government would do it.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed his grace.“At any rate, I’m sure of this,” he said, “that if a Conservative governmentdid so, the Whigs would be just as indignant as you are now.” '

* * *

Sound familiar?

* * *

P.S. Fortunately, after vigorous campaigning which elicited the support of a surprising surprising percentage of the general population, the 2011 proposal to sell the trees was stopped.

P.P.S. It must be confessed that Frank Gresham is not motivated to grow and preserve trees solely because he thinks they look good, or even for the sake of timber, but because he and his father (especially his father) are hunt enthusiasts. The conviction that if the sports of hunting, shooting and fishing were ended, investment in the countryside would decline, also has a long tradition!

Crown Estate land still exists. Click HERE to find out about it in its current form.

WEDNESDAY WORD - SLUTS AND SLOVENS

2011-11-23T16:25:00.000Z

Until a few days ago, I thought aslut was someone who tied her hair in a turban, wore a nylon house-coat withflowers on and had a cigarette permanently hanging at an angle from her lipswhile she did the washing up. I also had the idea that, because a slut would beespecially open to sexual advances, it would be best not to claim to be one -however rarely one ever picked up a duster.

It was a perpetual wonder whyanyone would want to advance sexually or otherwise towards anyone sounprepossessing but, although I do not tie my hair under a turban or wear ahouse-coat (and never have I smoked) I’m not an enthusiastic cleaner either so,for years, I’ve thought of myself as a slut and have secretly wondered whethermy jumpers with holes in are more alluring than I would ever have realised byrelying upon a neutral examination in the mirror.

Then, the other day, completelyout of the blue, it struck me that I’d muddled sluts with slovens. I’m not sureI want to be one. (A sloven, that is.) There’s something flat in the soundwhereas ‘slut’ when not being spat as an expletive, sounds bright and crisp andcheerful.

Ah well. Can’t have everything.

WHAT PRICE A FOXGLOVE?

2011-11-22T11:08:00.001Z

I’ve been pondering the price ofplants.

There are all sorts of loops toexplore so, to avoid an excessively long post about matters for which there arefew logical answers beyond capital, supply, desire and demand, I’ll pop in anoccasional note.

* * *

Here’s one.

If a foxglove produces ninehundred and fifty six million, four hundred and seventy thousand, two hundredand eighty three seeds per plant - how much is each seed worth?

Does the mega-productivity of each flower mean packets of foxglove seeds should be cheap? After all, the price per seed must be microbialcompared with the cost of the envelopes they are sold in.

Or should they be amongst the most expensive on the market because oncewe’ve bought once, we’ll never go back for more; nor will our children need foxgloveseeds . . . nor grandchildren . . . nor any of us . . . right to the nth generation. . .

P PROBLEMS (EVEN THOUGH IT'S A SUNDAY!)

2011-11-20T16:00:00.000Z

I’ve developed a rather peculiar problem.

No. Not problem; irritation,frustration; an ‘oh bother!’ upon waking situation.

My first thoughts, every morning,all begin with P.

Before my eyes open, my brainbegins saying

“Peaches and presents of parmesan cheese,”

“Puffins take pleasure in purchasing plums.”

It doesn’t stop:

Porridge, percussion, persuasion and pop.

Polishing partridges practicing pique.

Puffins perching on poppadums prance and pipe while panthers eatpommegranites, persimmons, peaches, pencils, pink powders, peas, palavers,pyjamas . . .

It never makes sense. How couldit? It just never stops.

I’ve tried training my mind tochange to Rs or Ss - but failed. I fall into a doze and wake again with

“Particle physics”.

I’ve tried going to sleep withlists of G words in mind; random lists with different letters.

It doesn’t work. Ps alwayssurface when the day begins - especially the words ‘pink’ and ‘peaches’. Theyalways feature somewhere.

Does this happen to anyone else?

ROOM FOR REVIEW - STORYCUTS

2011-11-18T15:26:00.001Z

I’ve just spent £1:18 on a story.It took me ten minutes to read.

‘Storycuts’ is a new line inshort stories and novellas from Random House - there are masses of them; alleither previously unpublished or ‘hard to find’ and now released for e-readers.

The one I chose was ‘Clothes’ byRuth Rendell. I like her books. I am not ashamed to be a not-too-grisly crime-fictionreader. This though contains no murders. It’s about addiction. I can’t say itwas terribly well written (not by her standards) but downloading it prompted arange of thoughts.

The first, and most obvious, was- was it worth the money?

And the answer, I suppose,depends on the circumstances in which I might read it . . . and between trainswas all I could think. Instead of buying a cup of coffee for the sake ofsomething to do - I could download this (I have a Kindle 3G so I can accessbooks wherever I can use my mobile phone). A ten minute read for half the priceof a railway coffee? Definitely worth it. (As long as the platform is warm.)

Next - is it practical?

When I downloaded the story ontomy Kindle, I did it through my laptop. The Storycuts site at Random House isvery, very attractive but a bit strange.The titles seem to be arranged in a Random order - neither by author nor title,nor even by price (and, as I understand it,price gives a bit of an indication of length so that would not have been anunreasonable way of doing it).

I clicked through to Amazon with ease and ‘Clothes’ arrived instantly on my Kindle. Better still, it cost meless than the recommended price (£1:24) so I thought I’d check out the otherpossibilities. iBookstore - 99p. Not bad. The others - eBooks, Kobo, Waterstones, Smiths, Hive - not found or vague pages.Weirdly, it wasn’t even downloadable from rBooks - Random House’s own eBookservice.

Next test. Pretend I’m on a station platform. Turn on. Trythrough Google. Not yet enough hits to have brought it to the top of the listand accessing the internet on a Kindle uses power. No time to fiddle. Switch toAmazon. Type in Storycuts. Yup. Got it.

Imagine these deficiencies aresorted, after all, Storycuts is brand new. Imagine stories laid out in aneasily discernible order. Imagine you can buy them from all the suppliers inthe list . . . will it be worth it?

That’s a hard one. What if itturns out the stories are previously unpublished / hard to find because theyaren’t very good compared with others written by all the famous names in thelist? (And they are famous.)

The story I downloaded is about a woman addicted to shopping. Appropriate! E-Readers are, themselves, addictive. It’sso easy, so magical, that all you have to do to buy a book is to press abutton. And if I were buying from the site on my laptop, it all looks so veryattractive. I can imagine saying oh! I’ll try that! And that! Maybe a quickread before bedtime . . . and, in no time at all, I’ll have spent a fortune onbits and bobs when I could have bought a proper, full length read. I could haveset myself up for the whole journey, not just a wait between trains.

I wish them well. My Kindle hasgot me reading at a tremendous rate after years of sluggishness. I’ve neverbeen a short story enthusiast but reckon I could become one. Storycuts might bea way to draw me in. After all, there’s no way ten-minute stories can be sold,one at a time, on paper and from bookshops. But I don’t want offcuts andoutcasts. I want brand new, top quality work. Maybe this is the time for newDickenses to emerge and churn out wonderful tales at top speed that will haveus anxious for the next story, maybe the next instalment of a longer tale.

POST ON THE OTHER BLOG - SPRING IN NOVEMBER

2011-11-17T12:54:00.001Z

There’s a new post on my other blog

Esther’s Garden Notes

It’s called

Spring In November

BREATHING THE AIR

2011-11-16T08:20:00.001Z

It used to be that a garden was aplace with fresh air. Even small, trampled patches in trafficy cities smelleddifferent from the streets around if there was a tree to flap about a bit.

Pubs often had pleasant gardenswith flower beds and mown grass. If you didn’t like the smell of beer andsmoke, you could sit outside and enjoy a meal or a coffee.

Then came the anti-smoking lawsand smokers streamed outside.

Wherever you go, there’s bound tobe someone spoiling the atmosphere.

Instead of keeping their smellsto themselves, they take them into a breeze and waft them all over the place.They stand outside shops and offices. They puff at bus-stops. They smoke in thepark. They pollute the gardens of pubs and hotels so non-smokers, the verypeople who still have sensitive noses and healthy lungs and are the most likelyto enjoy fresh air - are forced to sit in the stale indoors.

There’s a now a move to stoppeople smoking in cars. The B.M.A. (the British Medical Association) says it’snot good to sit in a small space filled with smoke. I understand that. But it’svery annoying that the more smokers are protected from themselves - the worseit gets for the rest of us.

I’m glad people who work inoffices no longer have to put up with smoky rooms and that bar staff are nolonger put at risk of cancer just because they sell beer - but shouldn’t theytoo be able to pop out for a breath of air from time to time; granted a momentto breathe the breeze and sniff the roses (if there are any)?

BALANCING THE BENCH

2011-11-14T21:42:00.001Z

I’m sure I’ve seen a photo of abus balanced on an egg. Ming says I may have done but, if I did, it was a hoax.

It may have been a hoax but,because I believed it, I balanced our garden bench on upturned flower pots tostop the legs from sinking into soft earth.

All went well as long as people loweredtheir bottoms precisely at a right angle when they wanted to sit there but Icouldn’t reasonably be expected to mount a bottom guard on a bench and someone’snether regions must have come in at an angle for one of the pots tippedsideways and it smashed and the bench went wonky.

So, this morning, I manoeuvredthe bench onto one of its ends, levered it out between the cordyline trunks andprepared to spread gravel - a betterbase for it to stand on.

But the cordylines had droppedleaves all over the place - long tough leaves robust enough to thatch a roofwith. (They never rot; just go floppy and fibrous.) So I went to fetch a big brownpaper sack from the shed.

(£1:16 from the council offices.)

(The sack, not the shed.)

The council provides us (for free) with

1. Green boxes for tins and jars andbottles

2. Green plastic bags for paper

3. Little red plastic bags for batteries

4. Brown bins for food waste

and

5. Green bins with wheels for ‘residual’waste.

Corrugated card has to be tied intobundles and put with . . . I think it goes next to the brown bin . . . as dobags with leaves and sticks.

* * *

Ming used to laugh when we firstmet because I took (what were to him) strange paths from any one place toanother. It had never struck me not to follow bus routes - which, almost bydefinition, go ‘all round the houses’. That was unless I took a short cut and,as all my short cuts were along the prettiest paths, the most interesting roadsand the most charmingly winding rivers (on the grounds that time passes fastestwhen one is happy) they were often longer than the long ones.

* * *

In politics - I’m left wing.

In my habits - conservative.

Worthing drew the shed.
He drew it when the top half was shut.
(As you can see!)

It has rarely struck me that Icould do things in ways other than by habit - and I never (or rarely) wouldconsider opening both halves of our shed door - any more than I would think of takinga dull route to town.

So - at this time of year, thetop half stays pinned back to let cats jump in and frighten small mammals whowould otherwise feast on grass seed and try to hibernate in the paper waitingto be recycled.

In summer the top half is pinnedback because that’s what one does in the summer - leave windows and doors openfor the air to breeze through.

If I want something (a rake, afork, a sack) I reach in - even when it wouldbe much easier and quicker to open the door properly and walk in.

* * *

You know how, when you arebreaking a twig over a bent knee it sometimes cracks in half and sometimes sortof twists and splits instead?

I think that may be what happenedto my top left rib this morning when I reached over the lower half of the doorand stretched down sideways to pick up a sack for leaves.

I’ve never cracked a rib beforeso I’m not certain that’s what’s happened - but I did a big ‘Ow!’ and I’ve doneseveral big ‘Ow’s’ since then - which meant gravel spreading and benchreplacing was very difficult.

* * *

If only people would sit straightwhen they sit down!

WEDNESDAY QUOTE

2011-11-09T09:34:00.000Z

Instead of a Wednesday Word, today it's a Wednesday Quote.

Didcott, Worthing and I like the William Brown stories (Just William) by Richmal Crompton.

In 'William Again' (first published in 1923) William shows distinct signs that he may become a horticultural scientist when he grows up.

In the chapter 'Just William's Luck', he goes to stay with his aunt and she lends him such a boringly sentimental book, he drops it down the well on purpose. Then he tries to play with the cat but the cat is not used to boys and runs away.

'Williamnext climbed the apple-tree, but, like the rest of Aunt Ellen's establishment,the apple-tree was not "used to boys", and the first branch uponwhich William took his stand precipitated him onto the lawn, and almost downthe well, to join his victim "Peter, the Sunshine of the Home".

'Next,he took up a few of Aunt Ellen's cherished chrysanthemums to compare the lengthof their roots at different stages, replanting them when he heard Aunt Ellen'sfootsteps approaching.'

William, as his fans know, has a habit of saying things like

'Well, what I say is . . .'

So . . . what I say is - how many of you reading this have thought of studying the length of plant roots?

Have you ever even pondered the possibility that you might dig up your prized chrysanthemums so you can compare the length of their roots at different stages?

Hm.

* * *

Oh!

I do want a Wednesday word after all.

falafel

STREET VIEW AND HIGH NETTLES

2011-11-07T14:54:00.000Z

If you haven’t done so already,try this.

Google your address on GoogleMaps.

When you get to the map with yourhouse on it, look to see if there’s a drop-down menu under the heading ‘More’.

If there is, click it, then click‘Street View’.

You may not immediately find apicture of your house but you can manipulate the scene so you ‘walk’ down theroad till you get there.

* * *

You know how I like to growthings but am not a gardener? There’s a difference. (This isn’t a separatesubject . . . )

You know how I interminglenettles with my other plants at the front of the house to protect them fromlittle people who might like to wander round on the flower bed?

You know how all of us (nearlyall of us) need to dig things out from time to time, move them around, dig incompost?

You know how gardens go throughphases? There are moments when everything looks beautiful and other times whenyou think ‘Oh dear, something’s gone awfully wrong here'? (Well, maybe you don’t- but you can imagine it.)

My front garden swings aroundquite a lot.

It depends who’s walked on itrecently . . . picked which flowers . . . how many plants have had their headsswiped off . . . whether the dustcart has just gone by and the rubbish gone flyingabout and been caught against my bushes . . . whether I’ve dug it all up!

* * *

Back to Street View.

I’d never looked at it till theother day.

I ‘walked’ down the road (in avirtual kind of way) with my heart in my mouth. What would I find?

Summer. Not bad. Flowers etc.

What came as a complete surprisewas that one can rise into the air and look down. I can see a bit over our highwall and into our back garden. Anyonewith internet access who cares to do so can do the same.

My garden is small so only theupper parts of plants show. But if it were bigger, there would be a longer view.

I’m glad it was summer when thephoto was taken. I’m glad the nettles weren’t too high. I’m glad our underwearwasn’t on the washing line!

If you live somewhere quiterural, you may not yet be on the system. If you have a drive which obscuresyour house from the road, I don’t think the camera will have been taken down it. . . but I ‘visited’ a village on ‘Street View’ where I used to live. The picture of our old house was taken in winter when the hedge was thin and the trees empty of leaves so you can look through and across the lawn. There was one tree I specially liked so I checked to see if it is still there. (It is.) But the people who live there now hadput their re-cycling at the end of our old drive. If they had been able to chosewhen the picture was taken, it might not have been just then!

Is your garden there? Take alook.

(I’m keeping my fingers crossedthat your nettles weren’t too high when the van came by!)

ROOM FOR REVIEW - THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

2011-11-06T08:51:00.000Z

Thanks to Jonathan Cape for giving Lucy Corrander a book - and thanks to Lucy for passing it on tome to review. (Even though it has nothing to do with gardening!)

Dandelions are powerful. Not onlydo they have tasty leaves for guinea pigs, they fill the world with gold; they tellthe time and teach us about random seeding.

There’s a dandelion clock on theback of ‘The Sense of an Ending’ - a short novel which has just won the Man Booker Prize for Julian Barnes. Its parachutes have been taken by the wind andare floating round to the front cover where they are almost pushing the titleand the name of the author over the edge.

It’s an appropriate image - forthis is a book about time. Time and the way human seeds land . . . well, where?

Time can be dreary - and I had apretty dreary time reading the first half. A dull young man (Tony) fails tomake a new community when he leaves home for a dull University so he clings tohis three friends from school. (He doesn’t mention his parents much). He’spleased to have a girl-friend (she’s pretty dull too) though he finds itdisconcerting when she doesn’t like his record collection. This is all so muchlike the non-events of student life in the 1970s, my brain kept morphing thetitle into ‘A Sense of Place’ - a place I have already been and don’t speciallywant to go back to.

But it isn’t set in the ’70s -it’s the ’60s (with ’50s-left-overs). Decades don’t spread evenly through aculture. Tony isn’t enthused by fashions and rave-ups nor is he energised bythe moral challenges of movements like CND and Anti-Apartheid. He likes tothink about history but isn’t interested in taking a part in it.

Which is just as well, becausethe first half of the book isn’t so much a story as a ramble round the idea thathistorians, sometimes, may understand events better than those who were thereat the time. Historians can listen to more voices, engage with wider contexts,read extra documents. We humans like a strong line and the work of a historianis to set ‘facts’ into a clear narrative. We might have to revise and re-revisewhat we think happened in the past - but this is ok. We can cope. For emotionalsecurity, being clear is more important than being ‘right’ about our histories,whether they are political or personal.

If Tony had actually done something interesting, he might have distracted from this thesis. He sees theSevern Boar, he meets his girl friend’s mother. His cleverest friend killshimself.

* * *

The second half of the bookdemonstrates the thesis of the first - with the added point that learning abouthistory can be a darn sight more interesting than creating it; the view widens.

Tony (now retired) becomes thehistorian of his younger self. He trawls through memories, conversations and bitsof an old diary to discover the ‘real’ relationships between him and the peoplehe used to know. He still isn’t very exciting but he’s emerged from ‘dull’ to‘ordinary’ - and ‘ordinary’ is reassuring. Indeed, ‘ordinary’ is interestingwhen it’s affable and engaged.

Poor Tony. He is very harsh onhow he was when he was young. He looks at a letter from his early twenties andis horrified. It’s not a pleasant letter . . . but he was young . . . and understress. There’s no sense in judging what any of us did ‘then’ by what we would do ‘now’.

The young traders who shoved the world’s economy almost to thebrink (like dandelion seeds at the edge of the book cover) . . . should theyhave known better? Do we need to forgive them? Is there anything to forgive?(This is me wandering - it isn’t in the book.)

Then I remember how young despotscan be, dictators, cruel soldiers, war-mongering politicians. I can hardlyadvocate that we wipe aside their crimes and say ‘Never mind, it was your age,dear!’!

But Tony . . . the boy whowondered why people in novels have more dramatic lives than the rest of us,more profound emotions . . .

Poor chap. Imagine being the maincharacter in a book and by the time you’ve spent the whole of the second halftrying to find out what was going on in the first - you discover the storywasn’t about you after all. . . and if there’s anyone who needs judgement orforgiveness, thats not you either . . .

* * *

Would I recommend ‘The Sense of an Ending’?

I don’t know.

Do I think it a worthy winner of the Booker Prize?

I don’t know - it’s the first Booker Prize-winning book I’ve read.

I plan to win it one day so maybe I should find out what the judgeslike.
No. It’s ok.

They’ll like what I write.

It’ll come to them naturally.

Meanwhile . . .

I expect to meet Tony at afriend’s house one day. When I do, I’ll be interested to know whether he’s stillre-writing his youth . . . and I’ll ask him whether, if he had been born later,he and his friends would have found life less taxing . . .

And if I’m looking forward to chatting withTony . . . while we stand somewhere on the edge of a crowd, our teacups clattering uncomfortably in theirsaucers . . . the author who conjured him must have done something right.

(And, rather strangely, I'll probably read the book again.)

The Sense of an Ending is Published by Jonathan Cape.

Jonathan Cape can be followed on Twitter.

THE QUEEN AND KATE OF CRIME

2011-11-04T18:17:00.000Z

I’d been to look at ferns.

One thing leads . . . had led toanother. At the beginning of the summer, I demolished the pile of old brancheswhich had been disintegrating too prominently and for too long in the northwest corner of my garden. Wildlife is all very well but it has plenty of otherplaces to go round here. Zoonk - it’s gone.

Space.

I moved the bench into the space.

Now there was space where thebench had been.

Ferns - I’d have a collection offerns.

When my brother’s neighboursmoved house, they took the door-handles with them. When one of our relationstransferred from a large house to a small one (a couple of generations ago) shetook a chimney pot. The world is strange. And now we have it. (The chimney.) Aschimneys go, it is not beautiful but, as family pass-ons go, it’s interesting. AndI’ve been thinking . . . perhaps I could grow a plant out of the top. Maybe afern?. Something plumey - like smoke.

So, this morning, I bought afern. (I’ll buy other, smaller, cheaper ones elsewhere to go round it; to sitat its feet.)

And I bought a reduced priceapple-mint.

Having a collection of mints maynot be the most sophisticated of garden specialities but I have chocolate-mint,peppermint, garden mint and . . . now, variegated apple-mint. I don’t likespearmint or pineapple mint so my collection may be complete at four. I’ll callit a ‘small collection’. That way, people will think I’m being modest ratherthan truthful.

And I bought a dilapidated hyssopplant for one pound. It will have pink flowers and I only like purple but,well, never mind, now I have it.

Then, there I was, walking along. . . and my feet, by some miracle, took me into a bookshop. Do your feet dothat? - mysteriously ignore straight lines when they come within a street ortwo of a shop with books? Suddenly, unaccountably, you are looking along shelvesinstead of waiting at the bus stop.

One minute ferns, the next minute. . .

Here, I have to apologise.

This is an almost strictly-no-photosblog but . . . I can’t let you miss out on this.

I’m part way throughre-organising my garden; the bookshop is part way through re-organising itsshelves - with results perhaps even more surprising than ferns sticking out ofchimneys.

THE QUEEN AND CROCOSMIA

2011-10-29T10:42:00.000+01:00

I’m fed up with families.

First it was Gordon Brown. Hejust couldn’t stop. On and on he went about ‘hard working families’. Family TaxCredits can be very useful and Gordon Brown was well motivated when he devisedthem. But my! Did I get fed up with the ‘hard working families’ they weresupposed to support!

I grew up in a family. I live ina family now - a very happy and conventional one. We are a pop-up story bookkind of family - two parents, two children (and now a granny living locally!).We have a little house with a little garden and two cats. (We used to have two guineapigs too.) I have lived with, and appreciated, other people’s families. I really have nothing against families -

but,

when I hear politicians trotting out praise forthis hypothetical, hold it up to admire (and win votes from) ‘hard working’kind, I want to throw milk bottles through our kitchen windows. The sound ofbreaking glass might soothe my anti-domestic brain.

For I have been a single persontoo. Haven’t we all? And, inside, because whowe are now is constructed from who wewere then, there is a sense in which I still am. Just like millions ofpeople in our society, I have lived alone. Just like millions of people, therewas a time when, though married, we had no children. Indeed, there are fewpeople in this country who have not spent at least part of their lives beingsingle and/or childless.

Almost all ofus will come to a time when we can no longer work - whether hard or not. Yet weall need food, something to wear and something to eat. If I sit at a receptiondesk all day with no-one to greet and no phone to answer, and can’t work hardbecause there’s nothing to do, I still need to eat in the evening. I can be ina coma and never lift a finger - but I still need something to wear and a hometo return to. Where has this moral imperative to be part of a ‘hard-workingfamily’ come from?

Boy! Do I get fed up with them!

* * *

I won’t bother to remember whyNick Clegg took up the refrain yesterday because a particular, well definedfamily was also in the news. The Royal one. The law will be changed so thefirst born child of a monarch (rather than the first born son) will, from nowon, inherit the throne.

In the past, on hearing this, Imight have shouted ‘Abolish the Monarchy!’ (I do a lot of shouting whilereading the news). Or I might have seen it as a feminist victory and made moreof a muffled ‘hurray - quite-right-too’ sort of sound.

But now? I’m sad that theimposition of forced labour is being extended to women. How can it be legal totake a child, right from birth, and train her up for such a specific role? I’mforever hounding my children with my one item of advice. ‘Keep your options open'.

(No. My one of two. The other isnever to take advice - not even from your parents.)

You don’t have to go to University if you get good A’ levels - but youwon’t get the chance if you don’t.

You can be a research chemist or a doctor who sings anddances. Being a singer who doctors at night is harder.

Be a full time writer if you have the skill - but havesomething to fall back on in case you changeyour mind.

Keep your options open!

Were I to have a child with a particulargenius, a skill or enthusiasm so wonderful it’s clear they had to put almostall their energy into . . . playing the violin, say, or winning the Olympics .. . I’d advise them to buy a drum kit, have a second bow, a degree in law, or atthe very least, a set of spare arrows. It’s not just to do with money, eventhough, for most of us, earning a living matters.

It’s to do with freedom, choice - and being happy.

So . . . should we be comfortablewith the idea that some little girls will, in the future, be taken from theircradles and told they will be Queens when they grow up? Not just fairy ones inpretty dresses - but real ones withsecurity guards and no room to dream of being ballet dancers or engineers?

* * *

I’ve dug out the crocosmia. ‘Breedinglike Rabbits’ expresses nothing in comparison with ‘spreading like crocosmia’.

I’m choosing a new home for it.Somewhere smaller, more defined. Should I start with one bulb, would that beenough? Or plant a pair? Or should I provide a ready-made, hard-working family?A big community of crocosmias who will volunteer to run the library when they’renot procreating (clearly on political grounds) or workinghard (new verb!).

This morning, I’m opting for justone plant. A solitary bulb in a solitary bed. A strike against the easy cult ofpolitician-speak.

Down with families, whether hardworking or otherwise!

(Except ours, of course.)

(And yours.)

(Unless you’ve decided that thefutures of your children and grand-children should be decided before they areborn.)

WEDNESDAY WORD

2011-10-26T08:49:00.000+01:00

IGNOMINY

That’s what I’m covered in -ignominy and mud.

It seemed a good idea when I wokeup yesterday - if I stayed in my pyjamas while I dug all the plants from one ofthe beds, dug in the last of the compost, stirred in some spare earth and spentpotting compost, put the plants back (in a better order) - then had a bath . .. I wouldn’t have to change my clothes twice.

The day went by. I dug andstirred and fell over and stood up and the phone kept ringing so the house gotmuddy as I went in and out to answer it; and I noticed the bamboo in the pot myhusband chose is thriving while the bamboo in ‘my’ pot is looking very unhappy(oh! ignominy!) and I got very tired, and the bruise hurt on my ankle where I’dfallen over and it was almost dark by the time I’d finished . . . so I wentback to bed as I was, muddy pyjamas and all - and fell asleep.

And I look out of my window thismorning - down on the bed which took so much effort - and it looks no betterthan it did before. It is boring, boring, boring.

I’ve wasted a day.

Oh! Ignominy!

(Not quite. The compost’s in thatearth. I know it even if you can’t see it.)

THE PRESS BUCKET

2011-10-25T09:36:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I'm sent press releases which might interest you - but I rarely mention them.

I go my own way, say what comes into my mind, follow my nose, wake up and waffle.

On the whole, I reckon this is exactly right for this blog but it means you sometimes don't get to know of things which might genuinely interest you. There are events too far for most people to attend, competitions and anecdotes which are adverts in disguise . . . there was the video of an orchestra giving a concert to an audience of plants to see if they would grow faster . . . a competition to win a school playground. Quite often, there's news from the RHS - but this isn't a horticultural newspaper.

I'll put Press Bucket information
and links in a Press Bucket box
like this.

I've hit on a solution. The Press Bucket. Here it is.

The picture is from an ancient post about the way snails move faster than we generally give them credit for (there they are, escaping from my collecting bucket while I'm rounding up their relations) so it's not entirely appropriate for this purpose - but it'll have to do. New drawings will emerge once I've bought a scanner which works (!) (I have a very long 'to do' list!)

So, from now on, if you see information and links in a box below 'The Press Bucket' - you'll know there may be something in there which I think may interest you but am not necessarily wanting to recommend or promote. It's just . . . just there!

HORATIO'S GARDEN

2011-10-24T15:50:00.000+01:00

We’ve just returned from a concertin aid of creating a garden for patients at the Spinal Treatment Centre ofSalisbury District Hospital.

Even though there are fortypatients staying, on average, for nine months, there’s nowhere for them to gointo the fresh air other than the car-park. (The CAR PARK! Perhaps that ‘fresh’should have been in inverted commas!)

The idea is to create a gardenthe size of two tennis courts, with paths wide enough for hospital beds to bepushed along. The flower beds will be raised to different heights so, as far asthey are able, patients will be able to get involved with the gardening itself.As an article in The Daily Telegraph says,

“Gardeningactions such as stretching, bending, gripping and lifting help improve balance,stamina, muscle movement and memory.”

All this is important but whatgives this project extra bite is that patients will be offered help and adviceon how to adapt their own gardens so they can continue gardening when theyleave.

The garden is to be called ‘Horatio’sGarden’ - named after the son of the spinal surgeon - David Chapell (one of theprime movers behind the project). Horatio, as a volunteer, had conducted asurvey of patients to find out what kind of garden they would like . . . but, duringthe summer holidays, he was killed in a polar bear attack while on an expeditionfor young people on the arctic island of Spitzbergen. He was seventeen.

As I write this article . . .about half of the £150,000 needed for the project has been raised.

If you would like to ADD TO THIS, CLICK HERE

If you would like to find out MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT, design, the plants to be used . . . CLICK HERE!

WEDNESDAY WORDS

2011-10-20T08:00:00.001+01:00

It's seven in the morning and there are two blackbirds. One is making a sort of 'tip, tip, tip' noise. The other is twittering back. A song would be better.

I've been wondering why the word

PORTACABIN

(Oh! The beginning of a song - in the distance. It makes my insides quiver. There's a crow somewhere too.)

. . . it's interesting that the word

PORTACABIN
is good to hear and pleasant to say

when

CACHEPOT

is neither. Indeed, it's horrid.

(More birds; interspersed with silence. A solitary gull - occasional squawks. More blackbirds. Long distance communications. Astonishing how the noise builds up. In the summer, they wake before me. Come autumn, they are dilatory. A magpie. Warm up exercises.

(It won't last long. Maybe ten minutes? Then the airways will be turned over to gulls. But it's pleasant, sitting here, listening, cataloguing; window open (despite that it's October) - but I must wake Didcott.

The gull and crow have almost got their voices in trim.)

Portacabin!

Portacabin should, from now on, be used as a cheery morning greeting.

Portacabin!

P.S. There's a company called 'Portakabin'. In the absence of advice otherwise, I've decided 'Portacabin' is a generic term and 'Portakabin' specific to make. If there were two ways to spell 'Hoover', I'd be able to say 'Portacabin is to Portakabin as Hooverr is to Hoover'. Something like that.

BAMBOO ON THE MOVE

2011-10-19T10:27:00.000+01:00

We have two kinds of bamboo - onebig and hefty, one with pretty, delicate leaves.

My husband has complained aboutthe delicate one for years. It’s not that he objects to its look - but itsposition by the front door. More and more I saw him eye it with repressedhostility. “It’s pushing the holly tree over,” he said. (At least, that’s whatI thought he’d been saying.) Heading for four foot high, it’s true, the treedoes lean a little towards the street. But, as I’ve been replying (seeminglyfor years) “It’s not the bamboo pushing - it’s the sun pulling.”

Last week (nobly) (I thought) (andsadly) I dug it out and moved it into a big pot round the corner. But, once itwas there, it looked good. Not only was the vegetation which crowds the door a little less oppressive, the airiness of the leaves, andthe height of the stems, made the front look more cheerful. (We have two frontsto our house.) I waited (proudly) for him to come home. I happily anticipatedhis thanks. He would say he knew how much I’d liked the bamboo where it had been. He’d say too that because Ihadn’t moved it before, he’d even begun to doubt my concern for his feelings(and the little tree) but now my wonderful wifeliness was simply shining forth . . .

He came up the road. I stoodthere smiling. Obedient domesticity incarnate.

You’ve guessed.

“What have you moved it for? Itlooked good where it was. I liked it there.”

Oh!

But, by now, I approved of itsnew place so much, I didn’t want to move it back.

One of the good and bad thingsabout bamboo is that it spreads. This bamboo had hardly gone beyond itsstarting point. Up, it had grown, but not sideways. (Which may say somethingabout the way I first planted it but I think it’s more to do with the iron-likesolidity of what counts for earth outside our front door.) None the less, therewas a bit more than I needed, so I’d sliced off some of the feathery stems andginger-like roots. Now, I gathered them up, put them in an ancient yellow nappybucket (which is going on thirty years old and very handy in the garden becauseit has a square bottom and doesn’t fall over as easily as ordinary buckets ofwater do when they have tall stems in).

“Look!” I said, leading him tothe kitchen window. “I have these left over. I’ll put them back where they came from andmake sure they don’t crowd the holly this time.”

But, by then, he liked it thatthe bamboo had moved. He liked its new home. He was glad, after all, that therewas none left by the front door.

Being me, I abandoned the bucket where it was - behind a tree.

From the house, one could see the delicate leaves of this pretty plant sticking out coyly from behind the trunk

"You can't see me!" it said.

"I can!"

It looked . .. rather good. And there were enough stems to leave half there and use theother half to replace the rainbow chard when it comes to the end of itsseason.

Nappy buckets are useful - butnot entirely ornamental so, yesterday, two, big, glazed potsarrived. We’d wanted tall, terracotta ones - but the garden centre only had crackedterracotta. The rims of their lovely pots were chipped and the sides flaking. “Frostdamage,” said the assistant. (But we haven’t had a frost since before last spring.Have they been sitting been sitting there disreputable all these summer months?)

(If I’d had to guess . . . I’dhave said someone had decided to wash them with disinfectant. Terracotta doesn’tlike that. It doesn’t like washing-up liquid either.)

Today, I’ll plant the bamboo inthem. (Not the rubbish terracotta ones; the elegant glazed ones.) (When I say ‘elegant’- I’m referring to the one I chose.Ming chose late Victorian.)

A few weeks ago, I bought aMeerkat with a solar powered lantern. I’venow taken delivery of fancy pots.

Please don’t abandon this blog!

Four clumps of bamboo.

Note to self - buy a machetewhile we can still get into the house.

BLOGGING AWAY

2011-10-18T14:50:00.000+01:00

I'm going doddery. I've noticed it. Every thought I think has a history. I'm not yet old (not what I'd call old) but I'm in practise - going through a few warm-up exercises you might say - so I'll feel comfortable in my loosened skin when I get there. If I get used to what it feels like before it starts, maybe extreme age won't come as too much of a shock. For that's what old people do, isn't it? Recite their histories . . . "When I was young . . . ".

I haven't begun to tell you how old I am in every third sentence but, given time, I expect I will! It comes to us all in the end.

Meanwhile . . .

The first library I belonged to was a dedicated children's library in London. Yes! A library building with nothing in it but books for little people.

I also remember my first visit to the 'grown up library' a distance away. The atmosphere was stunningly different. I was eleven. I was impressed. Over-awed. Instead of light and a contented muffle of voices, there was silence. Real library silence. And wood. I doubt it really had oak panelling, though that's how I remember it. How could it, simultaneously, have had panelled walls and bookshelves round the edges (as well as up the middle?). That I thought it had - shows what it felt like to be there. It was smaller and darker than the children's library. I crept behind my parents, feeling like an intruder, trying to remember that I now 'belonged'. I had the right to be there - and the tickets to prove it! My first 'grown up' book was 'Dr Dolittle'. (Don't laugh! Have you read the original Dr Dolittle books? They are not a light read . . . perhaps I should write a series of posts on them . . . !)

Libraries are under threat. I imagine the National Poetry Libraries are safe. Hope so! I imagine big libraries in big cities are safe. Hope so! But the little ones, the local ones - can they stay? Or will the money that supports them be used for other things?

When it came into office, the present Government made a big deal about its big idea - we would have a 'BIG SOCIETY'. The idea was that wherever public services are cut back, volunteers would step in to take up the slack. Quite apart from having an exaggerated idea of how many people there are just sloshing around with lots of spare time, simply wondering what to do with it and who will only be too delighted to take over the organisation of everything in their community . . .

(being unemployed doesn'tcount

- unemployed people spend their time looking for work

. . . and worrying

. . . and getting worn down

. . . and they have their benefits stopped if areoverloaded with voluntary commitments)

. . . when it comes to libraries, what does it say about library skills? Why do librarians waste their youth in taking degrees when any old person can potter in and say 'Hey! I can do that!'? Clearly, in certain areas, the Government is running down respect for specific training and abilities . . . or, may . . be . . .

As usual, I reckon if only I had the time and energy, I could rule the world. I do wonder if I couldn't run some libraries better than they have been run over the last . . . quite-a-lot-of-years. . . and so much do I wonder this, I have written a post for 'Voices for the Libraries' - a site run by librarians as part of their campaign to save . . . to save . . . our libraries - and to save their jobs too! (Well, not necessarily the jobs of those who run the site . . . but it can't be avoided, cuts are about jobs as well as services.)

My suggestion is this - that public libraries which have not yet been closed need to save their buildings and their books by becoming so very, very good, no-one would ever dare shut them.

You can read what I said - HERE.

I'VE JUST READ ELIZABETH'S POST

2011-10-17T11:46:00.000+01:00

I've just read Elizabeth's post on skin care, ageing and attitudes to the elderly on her blog, Welsh Hills Again. I wrote a comment in reply but it went on a bit, so I cut it out and stuck it here instead.

* * *

I used always to look youngerthan I am - until I had children. Since then, I've looked older than my years.Some days I look very much older. It's all pretty random. I don't do anythingto enhance my looks. Remembering to wash when there are so many other things tofill the day is often enough of a challenge on the beauty front. I tried aconditioner with a slight tone in it once but it went funny in the hot sun andchildren were coming up to me in the street, asking why my hair was pink - so Igave it up, even in winter.

I suspect I should do more. I'mpretty certain my husband would like me to do more but . . . well . . . but . .. guess I’m not good advertising fodder.

I don't watch much beyond thenews and Dr Who on television but I know there's an advert for smooth skinwhich sends our family into great hilarity. The product doesn't actually makeyour skin softer but levels the ups and downs by filling them with cosmeticgunge. Lovely!

When I was a child I decided,that when I was old, I’d have crows feet which all went smiley ways upwards.I've failed. I'm a grumpy sort and, mostly, they go down. (I've just checked in the mirror.) I don't have photogenic ridges and furrows (yet) but . .. given time . . .

FRIDGES = CARS: PART ONE

2011-10-16T17:03:00.001+01:00

In a recent post (Pipes Under the Garden) I cast doubt on whether as many people need fridges as own them. In the comments, several people encouraged me to explain why I have it in for fridges. It comes in two parts. Here, dedicated to

Janet of Planticru Notes

Amanda

and

Janet of Plantaliscious

is part one.

* * *

We’ll begin with exceptions because, of course, there are many;

people who live in very hot places,

people who need to keep medicines cool,

who live far from towns and cities or

who grow so much of their own food that freezing makes sensible sense.

(Salted runner beans aren’t pleasant).

It may be that nearly everyone who reads this blog is an exception; it’s certainly possible. But exceptions are not the point. Of those who live in towns or cities where the climate is temperate - of these - the majority don’t need fridges or freezers.

Here’s a list of things which don’t need to be in a fridge. (Don’t think of exceptions - think of the point I’m making.)

Eggs

Tomatoes

Cheese

Lettuce and salads of any kind

Food to be eaten today

Food left over from yesterday

Most foods which will be eaten tomorrow

Nearly always, people say

‘But what about milk?’.

Milk can be a problem in summer - but with the bottle in a bowl of cold water and a damp cloth to draw the water up and over, evaporation takes the warmth away and the milk will stay fresh long enough to use.

Why do people need cars?

Often because of the ‘weekly shop’.

Why do people go to large stores out of their own areas and shop once a week, instead of buying things as they go along?

Because local shops are closing.

Why are local shops closing?

Because people shop weekly in large stores.

Why, again, do people shop in big out-of-the-area-stores?

Because prices are cheaper there.

Why are prices cheaper there?

Because local stores have to make up for not selling enough goods by pricing the ones they do sell high.

Why is turn-over low?

Because people do a weekly shop in large stores.

How are people able to buy lots of perishable goods so many days before they’re planning to use them?

Because they have fridges and freezers.

Why do people buy so many things at once, often more than they need?

- because the fridge is there to fill.

It looks silly with nothing in it.

It’s a habit.

How do people bring home their shopping when they buy so much in bulk?

In a car, that’s how.

What would people miss if they didn’t have cars?

Some would miss many things . . .

. . . but for others, it would mainly be that they couldn’t do a weekly shop. Buses would take them to work and back - but not back from the store with a mountain of goods.

Fewer fridges - fewer cars; lessenergy used, a slower consumption of finite resources like metal and plasticsand oil and . . . Don’t you think that sounds good?

HOW TO KNOW IF YOUR DETAILS ARE SAFE BY LOOKING AT A CHANCELLOR'S GARDEN

2011-10-12T11:47:00.000+01:00

I’m reading ‘Back from the Brink’,Alistair Darling’s recent account of his years as Chancellor of the Exchequer(2007 - 2010).

For a book about bank crises andbudgets, it’s a surprisingly easy read. Not that I’ll say much about it - you’llneed to read the book. (Or not to read the book if you have no interest in thefailing finances of Britain.)

(Or the UK? I don’t ever know whorules what here - and for all that there are many in Scotland who want independencefrom the rest of us, it sometimes seems that it’s really the Scots who governeveryone. Maybe they shouldn’t be seen as Scots (even though they are) butindividual ‘free rangers’. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are both Scots.Tony Blair went to school in Scotland. ‘Cameron’ is a Scottish name. I went toa Scottish University. Perhaps I should have a go at ruling the country toobefore I am old? (That way we’d find out what a real mess looks like!) )

(How do these posts get to be solong? I’m having a tea break in the middle of carting compost and semi-awfullumps of earth round to the front of the house to fill the hole left by abamboo I dug out and put in a pot. (Which was surprisingly easy because, evenafter several years of living out there, its roots were still going round incircles. Maybe I’ve discovered a radical new way to restrain bamboo - don’tdisentangle its roots when you plant it.) )

Back to Darling.

There are several un-economicthings which have struck me while reading his book.

One is the domesticinter-connectivity of numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street. Prime Minister andChancellor drift in and out of each others space and get mixed up with randomvisitors. (I didn’t quite understand why there was a real goat in a corridor.) Darling’sspeech writer worked in a back bedroom over-night and the cat sat under a tableduring an important meeting.

Another is that on budget day thepress who record a short address by the Chancellor to be broadcast later in theday come to Downing Street long before he sets off for the House of Commons -in other words, journalists and technicians know what’s in the budget before MPsdo. As they can’t exactly be trusted to keep quiet about such important news somethinghas to be done. What? Obvious! Lock 'em up! And that’s exactly what happens.They are locked up for the rest of the day and, knowing this, arrive with sandwiches!A new slant on restraint of the press!

But the reason I’m mentioning thebook here is this . . .

That in October 2007, AlastairDarling went home to Edinburgh for a weekend break in order to catch up withhis children and do a spot of gardening.

So there he was at breakfast,eating bacon rolls and reading newspapers, when his private secretary rang totell him the Chairman of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) was on thephone - the personal details of 25, 000,000 citizens (yes! twenty-fivemillion!) had been lost in the mail.

It’s changed since then, but atthat point everyone who had a child or children under a certain age received Child Benefit, regardless ofincome. A couple of CDs with all their details had been sent in anun-registered, un-recorded, untracked way through the ordinary post - and had gonemissing. With what details on them? Only names and addresses (children and all)Child Benefit reference numbers, National Insurance Numbers, bank and buildingsociety details. Names, addresses,reference numbers and banking details connected with twenty-five million people!That’s all.

So what did he do?

What would you do?

This is what he says:-

“I flew back to London, but notbefore going into the garden for an hour. There was not a weed left standing.”

* * *

It’s Wednesday. I’ve notforgotten. I’ve got a word. It’s unconnected with everything else but it’s agood one.

Weevil

that’s the word.

P.S. I nearly didn’t include thisbecause I don’t want you to start looking for connections that aren’t there. It’sjust that I’d thought of it before I decided on a post about weeding and didn’twant to give up on it.

THERE'S A POST . . .

2011-10-11T19:39:00.000+01:00

'If you had been rained on for forty hours, with puddles flowing into your shoes, with the nearest loo a walk away through dripping woods of oak and beech . . . you might have thought you understood why Wordsworth decided the view from Westminster Bridge was a sight which couldn’t be bettered anywhere on earth. The puzzle is, why, when he could have lived anywhere, he bought Rydal Mount, a comfortably large house bang next to where we’d pitched our tent (except we weren’t there at the time because he moved in in 1813). Love of one’s homeland must be a strong instinct. Rydal is thirty miles from his birthplace in Cockermouth so he knew what he was in for. And, there, despite the puddles, he created a garden in the rain. (Though I’m assured the clouds clear sometimes.)'

. . . This is the beginning of a post on my other blog, Esther's Garden Notes.

To read 'Tension in the Landscape', click HERE.

There's an introduction too. And pictures.

What are you waiting for? CLICK!

PIPES UNDER THE GARDEN

2011-10-07T09:14:00.000+01:00

You willhave noticed adverts in the sidebar.

One is a big red Phytoseiulus whichis there to draw attention to my cousin’s bio-control company. (Phytoseiuluseat Spider Mites.) I put it there for free because she’s family. Recently, Ibegan to accept some paid-for adverts. (Howcan you tell I’ve hit hard times?)

On my other blog (Esther’s Garden Notes) there’s an advert for Paving and Walling - and a representative fromWickes (the company which sells said Paving and Walling) got back to me andasked if I would review their Energy Saving Infographic (his description, not mine). I thought about it - anddecided I would. So here it is. But I want to make it very clear that I've onlywritten what I would have written if, upon waking this morning, I’dhad a sudden and unaccountable thought that I’d like to write about that verypage. And why not? That’s how most posts arise! After all, I reviewed Charles Dickens’ ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ . . ' - and he didn’t pay me a sou!

(Do people still say that?)

* * *

An Infographic, it turns out, isinformation with pictures - and the pictures on this Infographic (it’s such afunny word, I’ve got a bit stuck on it) are about energy saving in the home.

You can reach a readable version
by clicking
HERE.

It’s familiar stuff - don’t leavethe water tap running while you brush your teeth. (Try telling this to Didcott!) Don’t put more water in thekettle than you need. (The less income you havecoming into the family, the more you are likely to heed this!) Insulateyour attic, lag hot water tanks, turn off electric standbys . . . And vague estimates - for example that A+rated washing machines, fridges and freezers use 50% less energy than mucholder machines. (I could write a wholepost about that!)

(In our family we save 100 % of such energy by not owninga fridge or a freezer - I could write awhole post about that too - several!)

So what about the less familiar?(To me, that is.)

There are two suggestions whichspecially caught my eye.

The first is to do with puttingpipes and a pump under your garden where the temperature is a constant 10degrees. (At what depth? And is this really the same wherever you live?) Apparently,you can take advantage of this to create under-floor heating for your house.I’d not heard of this before so I began searching around on the Wickes site. Isthere a recipe or a kit? Would I need a builder to do it for me? (Well, ofcourse I would - but what about aclever enthusiast?) Can’t find a thing. I’ll have to do a bit more exploring.

The other is sun-pipes which letlight in through your roof.

In the Philippines there’s a mancalled Illac Diaz who is illuminating the homes and schools of the very, verypoor with lights made from plastic drinks bottles, water, a dash of bleach andsmall squares of metal. They cost a dollar each to make and give the equivalentin light of a 60 watt bulb. They work indefinitely and with no cost as long asthe sun shines. To us, lights which work only in the day, might seem pointless - but if you live in a windowless home in aslum, it can be of enormous, ENORMOUS, value.

Here’s a link to a short BBC video report about it.

But back to the Infographic andthe sun-pipes . . . Type ‘sun-pipes’into the Wickes site and it gets you no-where. I think they must be thinking ofthings like the ‘Flexi Sun Lights’ - which you can buy from Wickes. (Though I would be reluctant to drill a holethrough my roof.)

(How many builders read myblog?)

* * *

(How’s that for an info-ad?Ad-review? Post?)

* * *

Brilliant. The wind has just blown a big container of bottles and tins for recycling across our garden.

P.S. For my posts on Nicholas Nickleby:-

The Friendship of Flowerpots

In Defence of Hysterical Women

DRACAENA MARGINATA

2011-10-06T09:58:00.000+01:00

Hurray! It’s autumn!

The heat has gone. The cloudshave come in. The wind is up.

A huge gathering of herring gulls has assembled over-head. Not even the sh-sh-sh of air or the boom of the bay treewhile its branches make a bid to break free from their trunk can obliterate the screeching.I don’t know what they are doing up there; why they are flying in such anagitated circle. Maybe they are cross with the wind because it’s stopped them goingwhere they want to be.

Yesterday was supposed to betent-moving, house-working day - but the wind was creeping up even then so, atthe very moment I started moving livingroom chairs to get to the tent (which has been stashed behind them since ourholiday) at that very moment, I decided to bring the Dragon Tree indoors. That wasmuch more important than sorting the house.

Housework, I find, is a wonderfulinspiration. Almost always it happens that a revelation strikes at the verymoment I start. I plug in the hoover . . . and remember I need to go to town. Itake the accumulation of bits and bobs from the landing windowsill, spread themout to sort them . . . and realise there’s a post to write . . . a picture todraw . . . a book to read . . . a weed to weed . . .

The Dragon Tree is a pain. It’sone of those plants we had space for when it was little, but there isn’t spacefor it now it’s big. The coffee trees are the same. And there’s a pineappleplant. But they are so much part of thefamily, they have to be accommodated somewhere. You can’t just fling them out. Inthe summer, they go in the garden. In the winter, the Dragon Tree has variouslylived with the ironing board beside the kitchen dresser, by the mirror outsideour bedroom, in the bathroom beside . . . the bath. Each time, it starts finein its allocated space but insists on reaching for the light so, long beforespring, it has turned into an obstruction.

This, as you see, is a
picture of a rose leaf in autumn.
Rose leaves are nothing
like Dragon Palm leaves
(which are more
like coarse grass).
The trouble is, I am
without a proper scanner
- so I have to
re-cycle pictures from
previous posts.
Very ecological.

Sometimes it nearly dies. The sungot at it a few months ago and a bit fell off. Ming rushed to rescue the bit. (He’san experienced and enthusiastic plant first-aider.) I rescued the plant itself.Now we have . . . bother, we have two dragon trees!

The current state of the original- three tall stems with healthy sprouts of leaves on top. This is not what aDragon Tree should look like but it’s quite elegant - and manageable. So,yesterday, I ploughed round the house, looking for this year’s winter quarters.I measured bookcases to move. Wondered if I could put our DVDs in the attic.Wished the house were bigger. Then took all the coats off the hooks in thehall, flung them in the living room (where they still are - to keep companywith the tent) and put the plant at thefoot of the stairs.

If it reaches for the lightcoming through the front door - we’ll have to move house after all.

Valerie McBride-Munroe (who alsogoes under the astonishing pseudonym ‘Aunty Plantie’) tells me Dracaena marginata pep up after a drink of sugar water. (6 teaspoons in alitre, fed to a plant that has already been watered well). Now, do I want itpepped up just yet . . . or shall I wait till spring? The issue is whether wewill need to get past it to go upstairs between now and the return of warmweather . . .

I will have to ask the others.

P.S. There's a picture of what our Dragon Tree looked like a few years ago (two, three . . . ?) on the post 'Scottish Erdbeeren Meet Brecht'. It's taller now; healthier. It's leaves are shorter and, because it's been in the garden, it's growing straight. But by Christmas . . .

WEDNESDAY WORD ON A WEDNESDAY - FOR A CHANGE!

2011-10-05T11:24:00.000+01:00

PYRETHRUM

THE TRIUMPH OF NAFF

2011-10-04T11:00:00.000+01:00

I’ve always liked pampas grass.

As a child, when I wasn’t askingfor an older brother, or for unrealistic butterflies to be pinned to theoutside of our house, or to move to the country or buy an estate car, I waswanting pampas grass.

My parents put it on a par withgarden gnomes and said no. (Lots.)

But for me - it was the height ofexotic. It burst through boring lawns as if Africa had worked its way into the earthand out again. I peered between the stems and looked for tigers.

My perception was that the peoplewho grew it polished their windows and washed their cars and ironed theirclothes and did all sorts of incomprehensible things - but(said my parents) - owners of pampas grass were obliged to do somethingwonderfully out of character once a year - and burn it down. Burn it down! How’sthat for releasing a wild spirit from neat suburban circles? And have you everseen its silver-white flowers against a dark-steel, thunder filled sky when it’sescaped to live in the wild? Whoever would imagine that such dramatic beautycould ever have been contained or restrained or even exist?

So . . . think of my pleasurewhen a fountain of tatty pampas grass self-seeded on the outside of my gardenwall at the point where it meets a brick parking place. No earth. No circle. Nowater. No room to grow very big. Yet - there it is! A metre high, metre wide,one sided gift - living beside me of its own volition.

And, this year, a tall pole arosefrom it. A flower was coming! Or was it? What if a bit of maze had arrived inexactly the same spot? Or a dislocated bamboo? Then a little tuft appeared ontop - a sort of white I-surrender handkerchief. I was triumphant. Jubilant.(Even though the tuft was very little.)I was going to have a pampas flower!

Then it was cut down. Lopped off.Snapped away. Someone had taken it and opened it and shredded it; revealingthat the little tuft was merely the advance guard for long plumes of silk.There they lay, exposed; all over the car-parking place and drifting into theroad.

I’m not one for dusting orsweeping - but I am good at despair . . . so I let it blow away. It’s taken acouple of weeks but now it’s all gone. And, with it, it has taken my resistanceto naff-ness. (Well, to a degree.) I’ve bought a meer cat. It’s made of heavyplastic and it’s standing on its hind legs. It’s holding a solar poweredlantern and it’s smiling. I’m smiling too. I’m not convinced it will work and Idon’t even know why I like it. My family is horrified and bemused. All I can dois to promise I won’t put giant plastic butterflies all over the front of ourhouse. (Though a neighbour has some and sometimes I wonder . . . )

P.S. Geographical informationabout the non-relationship between pampas grass, tigers and Africa - irrelevant!

P.P.S. Pampas Grass is Cortaderia selloana.

THE SOUNDS OF PUBLISHERS - AND A COUPLE OF WINNERS

2011-09-28T13:51:00.000+01:00

First for Romance - not romance of content (remember?) butof sound

Weidenfield and Nicholson

Simon and Schuster

Ffaber and Ffaber

(Aren’t those doublefs delicious?)

(Except it turns out they don't have them.)

Allen and Unwin

But if ever you sought to disguise a publishing house as acult, you could hardly do better than call it

Transworld

Stark and bald insound

Concrete

(Like the flat roofof a 1960s ferry terminal)

And with a meaning whichis likely to scare the horses.

(Un-necessarily?

Probably.)

(As an aside - Transworldpublishes the very informative ‘Be Your Own Expert’ series beloved by GardenCentres.)

And, during the course of thispost, I’ve realised I’ll need, one day, to look into the trans-world-ness, theout-to-dominate-everythingness, (unless I’m mistaken about it -ness) of Bertelsmann.

Never heard of Bertelsmann?

Nor had I till this morning. It’samazing what one can miss.

* * *

It’s a fine day, today - jut thekind of day when one feels compelled to throw bits of paper out of a window . .. so that’s what we did; me and Worthing.

On torn scraps of paper, I wrotethe names of those who’d left comments on the Language of Flowers post, screwedthem up (the scraps) put them into an empty wooden fruit bowl shaped like abowler hat - and threw them from upstairs into the garden. Worthing was waitingbelow to see what landed where and to determine which arrived closest to thechocolate mint. There was no doubt. ‘Hurtling Towards 6o, Beyond and . . . Flora Long Way Further into The Future’ was the winner by three feet. Thenext-nearest scrap landed in the big pot where Jerusalem Artichokes grow . . .and the third by a scrubbing brush which was left in the garden by mistakeabout three years ago and has sat in the same place ever since.

* * *

As for tickets for Grand Designs in Birmingham - only Rebecca asked for them. She said there will be over 500exhibitors - which is the right answer - so I’ll be sending her two tickets tothe event.

Very generously, the organisershave sent me two PAIRS of tickets to give away so . . . I’ll post the remainingtickets to the next person to leave a comment including the magic words ‘500exhibitors’ on the Walking on Water post. (As long as the small print is taken intoaccount.)

* * *

It’s a scruffy post entry, this;on a par with tipping out dust from an old hoover bag. Apologies. But houseworkis an inevitably inelegant process. Tipping the compost bin onto its side anddisentangling the wonderful black stuff from all the bits and bobs which havebeen put in by mistake since the weather slowed down . . . will be much morefun.

I’m not sure what theblog-parallel is for that!

BILL BRYSON AND THE GREAT EXHIBITION

2011-09-27T14:29:00.000+01:00

If I’d been a Victorian - Iwouldn’t have been a very good one.

I would have liked a biggreen-house with a boiler and pineapples. I would have liked a fleet ofimaginative gardeners and a big wheelbarrow. But I wouldn’t have liked to bepoor (which most people were) and I wouldn’t have been sufficiently inquisitiveto live up to the spirit of the age.

If I had followed familytradition, I wouldn’t have been contributing much to progress. One of myancestors (who was an architect) moved out of London rather than supply theworking classes with sanitation. Another (my great-grandmother, I think)presented her maids with new caps and aprons on their birthdays. How’s that forgenerosity? And another relation, who had a mild learning disability, wasbanished to Canada for riding with tradesmen on their carts because he likedhorses. Strait laced, reactionary snobs, our family.

I’m at the beginning of ‘At Home’ by Bill Bryson. It’s an easy read, fun and full of entertaining information. I’vegot as far as the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Crystal Palace (where it washoused) was designed by Joseph Paxton, head gardener at Chatsworth.

Here’s a quote:-

‘Nothing - really, absolutelynothing - says more about Victorian Britain and its capacity for brilliancethan that the century’s most daring and iconic building was entrusted to agardener.’

As well as celebrating Paxtonhimself, the point here is that the amateur, even an amateur from a poorfamily, could be given free reign in an area outside his immediate expertise. Imaginationwas the key - something I guess my family was a little short of. I doubt theywould have let him in the house.

I hope I wouldn’t have been thatstuffy - but I think I would have been a bit snooty about the Great Exhibition(to my loss).

I’ve just been reading a list ofthe exhibits - and enjoying it. It was an early version of the Grand Designs Exhibition - much bigger, much better, much more dramatic, even more eccentric. (And ranging in content far beyond the merely domestic.) I suspect that others don’t find such events quite as funny as I do or theywouldn’t happen! And what a loss to the world that would be!

Here’s another quote - a list of some of the things you might have seen in the Crystal Palace in 1851.

‘If the building itself was amarvel, the wonders within were no less so. Almost 100,000 objects were ondisplay, spread among some 14,000 exhibits. Among the novelties were a knifewith 1,851 blades, furniture carved from furniture-sized blocks of coal (for noreason other than to show that it could be done), a four-sided piano for homeyquartets, a bed that became a life raft and another that automatically tippedits startled occupant into a freshly drawn bath, flying contraptions of everytype (except working), instruments for bleeding, the world’s largest mirror, anenormous lump of guano from Peru, the famous Hope and Koh-i-Noor diamonds, a modelof a proposed suspension bridge linking Britain with France, and endlessdisplays of machinery, textiles and manufactures of every type from all overthe world. The Times calculated that it would take two hundred hours to see itall.’

. . . and all within a glasshouse covering nineteen acres. Nineteenacres.

. . . and my imagination wouldhave reached as far as a bell jar cloche.

At Home, by Bill Bryson, is published by Doubleday Books.

A Plant in a Bird Cage

SAVED BY A STRAWBERRY FLOWER

2011-09-26T17:04:00.000+01:00

I’m not looking forward to beingold.

When we returned from our holidaywe were immediately plunged into a crisis. An elderly relative had reached amoment in her life when the help she was receiving in her own home was nolonger enough and she needed to move - to find somewhere with twenty-four hourcare.

It had been brewing for years.She had looked at places where she might eventually go but always there was ‘nextspring’. “I want to see one more spring in my garden, then I will move.” Butthe trouble with spring is that no sooner has one packed up than the dying backof leaves prepares us for the next. The daffodils and tulips withdraw - but weknow they are there and readying themselves for another whirl. There was alwaysone more ‘one more spring’.

* * *

Part of our thinking intravelling so extensively round England and Scotland this year was to seek outa new place for ourselves. Maybe we would find somewhere on our route. At thevery least, it might help us crystallise the kind of place we are looking for.

Buxton? Ullapool? Could we copewith months of midges? (My face was soon circled with bites - a European flagon a white neck.) We saw people wearing hats like small, black bee-keepinghelmets. (You could buy them in the camping shop.) If I wanted to maintain aface, would I have to live behind mesh? Would I mind? On the other hand . . .concerts, mountains, bookshops . . . all sorts of things we miss here might beon offer elsewhere. . .

But, when we returned, places andideas buzzing . . . we realised our dreams and intentions would have to be setaside for the next few years in favour of our relative coming to live near us.

It’s possible to do somethingwhole-heartedly and willingly, yet with awful grief. I looked at my tomatoesand thought they were all dead.

* * *

For two mornings, I disentangledthe vine and clematis from all the bushes within their reach. They had turnedthe fatsia japonica, a white-current bush, a philbert and an elaeagnus (if youare wondering why on earth we have an elaeagnus . . . I ask myself the same)into a matted dome - and had got as far as reaching out for the bamboo. I couldhave hacked and tugged but that would have reeked too much destruction. I wentslowly and carefully.

Then for two days, I dug. Twodays of digging may suggest there was a lot to dig. There wasn’t. But theground was solid, solid, solid - with a sprinkling of deceptive dust across thesurface . . . and I was taking out and re-locating plants as I went, adding incompost . . . a right general fiddle - but satisfying as a new arrangementemerged.

On the fourth evening, I leantagainst the kitchen door and looked into the garden. There was a small, whitedot under the drooped leaves of an un-watered tomato plant. A strawberryflower.

One always gets late flowerings -and they always offer signs of hope; cheerful eccentricities. The apple treedoes it and there are yellow flowers again at the top of the Spanish Broom. Ismiled and leant down to twist the pot so the flower showed - and to do this, Ihad to brush the tomato bush aside. Brush? But it was awkward and heavy. Itdidn’t want to be ‘brushed’. Why? Because of its fruits, that’s why. Andanother, over there was the same . . . lots of plum tomatoes, busily ripening.And another . . . with trusses of cherry tomatoes spilled across the bath,ripening and delicious. I had been so despondent, I’d thought they were dead;and so despondent, that when I thought they were dead, I hadn’t even botheredto dig them out and throw them away. And thank goodness I hadn't! They are now allre-tied to their stakes. Branches lifted and supported. Lovingly watered.

Freeing the bushes, digging theearth, seeing the flower, lifting the weight of fruits which had arrived bymiracle rather than through attention . . . it’s all healed and re-settled meinto my old life. A new one can wait. Thank you garden.

P.S. You can see some of the tomatoes and the strawberry flower on my other blog - Esther's Garden Notes - In Praise of Neglected Tomatoes.

OF SATELLITES AND SNAILS

2011-09-24T10:22:00.000+01:00

As I write, the remains ofN.A.S.A.’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite are falling to Earth; some bitsas big as a fridge. (Size of fridge not specified.)

This has caused some concern inmy family. What if it lands on our roof / in our garden / on us? My jolly quipsabout fridges on heads = death = we wouldn't be in a position to worry after it afterwards didn’t turn outto be as reassuring as I intended so I began to listen more carefully to theradio.

“If you find a piece, don’t touchit in case it’s sharp.” Said a man from N.A.S.A..

But wouldn’t it be interesting(as long as it wasn’t sharp) to have a bit of space satellite on top of thebookcase, next to the badger skull? “This," I’d say to my grandchildren (ifever I have some) “is from the days when hardly any humans had cousins on Mars.”

No. Won’t be able to do that.

Here’s what N.A.S.A. tweeted asthe bits came down.

Any pieces of #UARS found are still the property ofthe country that made it. You'll have to give 'em back to U.S.

And:-

The U.S. is very safe from #UARS.It's final orbit did not cross the United States.

Well, that’s alright then. (?)

And:-

We're still waiting for #UARS Done! confirmation. If debrisfell on land (and that's still a BIG if), Canada is most likely area.

Oh! That’s why it’s alright. (?)

For my part, if a lump as big asa fridge demolished my newly bought and highly prized chocolate mint, theremains of my strawberries or my newly dug up and lovingly re-planted tulip anddaffodil bulbs (or members of my family) I would think we were being bombed. Well,we would be being bombed, wouldn’twe?

Here’s a definition of ‘ballisticmissile’ from the Oxford Dictionary of English (Kindle edition).

‘ n. a missile with a high,arching trajectory, which is initially powered and guided but falls undergravity onto its target.’

Fits.

In this case, the target might beEarth in general rather than my garden in particular but bombs are rarelyprecise - and a bomb chucked about randomly does not, by virtue of its randomness,cease to be a bomb.

Will invaded countries now beexpected to hand back the bullets and other missiles their enemies project over theirborders?

“Do you know how long it took usto develop them? Give them back straight away!”

It got me thinking aboutsnails.

Suppose, for the last ten years,I’ve been throwing all the snails I don’t want (which is all the snails I find)into my neighbour’s garden (purely theoretical this, you understand . . . ) andthe price of snails sky-rockets (topical way to express it) will I be able todemand them back? “They are mine!” I will say. “Give them back!” - and sell them?