On Separation And Loss... All Change!!

I've always had a bit of an issue with Separation and Loss.  Although I am ruthless about work-based separations and loss, (I never look back; once I'm out of there, I'm out of there) and house moves, (onwards and upwards, and anyway, I always take half my old garden with me to the next; I dragged my mulberry in a pot through three house moves, until I felt I had the right garden to plant it properly/forever...), I find some friendships very difficult to move on from.*

 

This requires no comment from me, stunned as I am. 

This required a comment from me, stunned as I was.

This beggars belief.

 

I've been reading Helen Yemm for years, and have loved everything she writes, except of course her liking for cats, which we all know really are the d****'s familiar.  I may yet fill the balloons with H2SO4...  As for Phantom and Angela, I think theirs is pretty much the first blog I stumbled into, and am utterly delighted that they are back blogging again after decades of neglect.  And the other thing is a real bollocks.  As I said, I've always had a bit of an issue with Separation and Loss.

* I know.  Never end a sentence with a preposition, jackass!

New Year's Day 2013: Run Hide Fight

With thanks to Michael Yon for the heads up.

 

We are instinctive creatures.  If we think something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  If we think something just isn't right, it probably isn't.  So let's move forward into 2013 becoming more aware of our feelings and instincts.  Just be aware though, that if we have a gut feeling something isn't right, it could just be indigestion...

 

 

New Year's Eve 2012

Don McCullin's Desert Island Discs

My love affair with Don McCullin continues...

The following is taken from the Guardian interview with Carole Cadwalladr outlining McCullin's return to Aleppo, and the documentaty McCullin due to be screened January 1.  Catch the full article here...

 

CC:  What do you think of photojournalism these days?

 

DM:  It's had it. Nobody wants to look at spreads of dying children. They want to see higher heels. It's all gone celebrity, hasn't it? Celebrity, looks, fashion. If I see another picture of Gwyneth Paltrow, I think I'll put my head down the lavatory. Fake tans, Beckhams, Jamie Oliver. I can't take any more of it. That's why I'm going to Syria.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/c3d7aaf1#p009mhn5

On Eating Roses Whilst The Kettle Boils

You know that old Christmas joke about finding yourself standing at the kitchen sink eating roses for breakfast as the kettle boils? Except we know it's not a joke, don't we...

In my defence, at least I haven't taken to greeting the postman drink in hand; even I baulk at hard liquor before martini o'clock.  The last autumnal traipse across the Chunnel coincided with SuperU's deal on Bombay Sapphire; 70cl for 12euro and I managed to get the last 6 bottles by clambering onto the bottom shelf and stretching to the very back of the top shelf.  Clearly lesser mortals, locals and les rosbifs were too embarrassed to clamber.  Me?  I'd climb Everest for a deal like that.

 

My new favourite clients and I are planning to restock their rose beds.  I'm gently nudging them towards a themed approach, having already surrendered all hope of enticing them into a mixed border design.  It's their garden, when all's said and done.  I'm thinking Song of Songs; I'm thinking Shakespeare; I'm thinking people they actually have in their address book.  I know; they are really lovely clients.  We'll be sticking with David Austin, as his really are the best and most deliciously fragrant English roses.

 

Just have a look at this new introduction for 2013, The Lark Ascending, described thus,

 

photo source: http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/Showrose.asp?Showr=6835

"A delightful rose that illustrates the great diversity that is now to be found among English Roses.  The flowers are cupped in shape with about twenty petals in each bloom.  They are medium in size and of a pleasing light apricot colouring, produced from the ground upwards in heads of up to fifteen, nicely spaced blooms.  They have a light fragrance that has been observed to vary form one flower to another.  Some of them are of Tea scent while others move towards the scent of myrrh.

The name is taken from Ralph Vaughan-Williams' piece of music, which was recently voted Britain's favourite by listeners to the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs."

 

 

Christmas Eve 2012 and a Miracle at Mass

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/track.html

NORAD tracks Santa again.

Louis Smith Wins Strictly 2012

Louis owns Strictly, with THAT hold 1.25 mins in...

Cerinthe Major Purpurescens at Blakesley Hall

 

I have coveted these beauties since I saw a stall holder at Bakewell farmers' market including them in her hand-tied garden flower bouquets.  Oh wow, I thought, why haven't I thought to grow these flowers.  Growing them couldn't be simpler, you just throw the seeds into the soil sometime round about mid to late spring, cover lightly then wait until they flower in earlyish summer.  And, as these little fellows are prolific self-seeders, you'll have plenty in your borders next year.  They'll need a bit of protection over a hard winter, given that they are Mediterranean evergreens, but these glaucous leafed delights are worth even this little bit of effort, especially if you treat them as a hardy annual.

The Cerinthe here were covered in bees, even in October, so you'll be giving your local bee colony an autumn treat if you get a bush or two into your garden.

 

The only difficulty I've had with Cerinthe is getting hold of the seeds in the first place.  You'll have to shop online (no great hardship), but if we are as a nation and a global community supposed to be taking action to reverse the global decline in bee colonies, it might help to shift these seeds into the budget range at B&Q.

 

 

And don't forget, December's farmers' market is held a week early for Christmas, on Saturday 22 December.  See you there.

Helianthus Annuus: Sunflowers

 

Given the atrocious weather we've had across the UK since the spring, these were just about the most productive flowers this year.  Too wet and too cold for the roses; ditto all the vegetables except the brassicas and lettuces.  They take a beautiful picture though, don't they? 

I planted these directly into the beds early April and just left them to get on with it.  After years of planting in rows of seed variety, this year I simply opened up a few packets, mixed said seeds and threw them into the soil then pretty much abandoned them to their fate.  I have to say, from midsummer onwards I picked flower after flower; Russian Giant, Choco Sun, Vincent's Mixed, Firecracker, Sunburst, Velvet Queen.

 

Unwin's have a lovely little seed planting wheel guide, catch it here.  Or if your life really is too short to click on links, here it is!  And thank you UNWINS!

 

 

 

First Sunday of Advent 2012

It's not that I've been slackering about for the better part of this year; quite the contrary.  I've spent most of this year with clients, my new favourite clients in particular. 

 

 

Here we are at the end of the year / start of the new year and we've restored huge tracts of their walled kitchen garden.  In the next month or so I want to make a start on a new orchard.

 

 This isn't their house - theirs is Victorian, this is Tudor; Blakesley Hall, a timber-framed house built in 1590 by Richard Smalbroke, a member of one of Birmingham’s leading merchant families.  I dropped in earlier this autumn on the way to or from Birmingham airport with the Irish rellies.  I rather like the juxtaposition of perfectly preserved and restored Tudor buildings, underneath the flight path of a major international airport...  Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens is as bad! 



 

One of the lovely young graduates working at Blakesley Hall has an Etsy shop, selling lovely, lovely, gorgeous things, and when she gets the mice-shaped Christmas tree hangings on there, I'm snapping the lot up.  Click on into her shop TheLittleLandOfMe and check for yourself!

Remembrance Sunday 2012

 

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.

Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.

 

 

        They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

 

 

        Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon: For The Fallen

 

The Slacker Diaries: The Prequel

What beggars belief is that I have the effrontery to finally post a post...  backdates to follow...

On Planting Lettuces / Why Do Lettuces Bolt?

"In March I sowed strips of Cos lettuces together with a packet of mixed lettuces I like to describe as frilly knicker lettuces.  You get the idea.  They really ought to have been planted out a couple of weeks ago, but my obscenely busy schedule made this impossible.  Each morning I'd stare out at the kitchen garden, cup of tea in hand and say to myself "I really must get those lettuces in..."

Matters reached crisis..."

And there I left it, having reached across my desk to answer the phone and then become embroiled in busyness.  And now, some five months on from this draft I'm composing a post about bolting lettuces.  Bolting refers to the sudden onset of your lettuces stretching up from their main stem, as if to catch up with the Borlottis you planted nearby, rather than remaining a nicely bunched, tightly curled head of leaves a few inches from the ground.  Bolting can be triggered by either a few days of cold weather, stress or by changes in the day length as the growing season progresses. 

Lettuces are particularly sensitive to the amount of daylight received, and given the appalling spring, summer and autumn we've had here in sunny Derbyshire, I'm overly delighted to have grown any usable lettuce at all.  There really isn't much you can do, except to pick your leaves as you need them, and enjoy the beauty of your bolting salad greenery.

 

On The Inevitabilty Of The Channel Tunnel

"I don't know why I was surprised.  You can't spend ever increasing amounts of time exploring the south coast and not at some point expect to hear the words, "Shall we nip across to France?"
 

35 minutes.  35 MINUTES!  And the carriage insides really do look like London Underground carriages, although mercifully without that oik that eats his breakfast cereal on the early London train.  And you just drive off, through acres of brilliantly lit apron and straight onto the A16 then the A26 for Lens.  How cool is that?

Why Lens?  It's where the rellies are commemorated, of course!"

And yes, rather like tomorrow's post, this post was partly composed at my desk until the phone rang, I answered, and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

The Slacker Diaries Part 22

I've been very busy since Easter.  Actually, very busy and also very lazy and tremendously relaxed.  We've been backwards and forwards to our house in France; to visit rellies in the west; Irish weddings; several funerals (I might be developing an expertise in attending funerals of non-familial, half-friends); reduced my cheese intake to "What the hell do you call that bit of dairy dust?" and eaten a sandwich in the street.  This last bit is really disgusting. 

 

I went to a school where eating in the street, regardless of whether we were in school uniform or games kit travelling to hockey matches on Saturday mornings, was a detentionable offence.  And by "eating in the street" school rules meant sucking a boiled sweet, or worse: chewing gum...  It did not mean eating something that required one's hand to deliver edible matter into one's mouth more than once.  In my first year rumour had it that a third former had been expelled for eating a Crunchie at the bus stop.

 

Here I am, mother of graduates, feeling reckless and a little disgraceful eating a sarnie in the street.  It was a pulled pork sarnie with enough chilli sauce to make your eyes bleed at a Caribbean festival, but that's beside the point. At least with a boiled sweet you can pretend to cough and transport the sweet from pocket to mouth under cover of hankie.  I tried to do this once with a chocolate biscuit in Double Physics.  I was caught by Dr Boyle and nearly killed except for years of practise swallowing entire contents in one go and then claiming to be merely emptying out my pocket onto the science lab floor.  It says lot about my school that the work for the cleaning staff was not considered by either of us...

 

In my defence, mi-lud, I've completed some stunning gardening projects since April - photos to follow.  Eventually...

2012 Olympics

picture source: http://crushculdesac.tumblr.com/#8 (I think)

Dear Lupin: Fathers Day 2012

Monday: Old age is full of surprises, most of them unpleasant, and it is rather like being punished for a crime one has never committed.  My inside is giving me hell but if I go to surgery for soothing medicine I will be whipped off to hospital, deprived of the last tattered shreds of human dignity and tubes will be inserted into every orifice I possess.  The biggest mistake I ever made was to come round after passing out when buying cut-price gin in Newbury.

From Dear Lupin... Letters to a Wayward Son

Charlie and Roger Mortimer

How To Travel With Undergraduates

Drafted in 2010:
There comes a moment when rebellion bursts through whatever carefully laid plans you think you've made; unmissable in its incendiary effects. The seeds of that rebellion, however, are barely perceptible and can pass you by unnoticed. Not by this mother.

Last summer the ungrateful wretches spent a small fortune and most of their waking hours texting, phoning and emailing their sweethearts back in England. This year, I booked the four of them onto flights for a fortnight's holiday, printed out their tickets then said "Cheerio!" as I dropped them off at Departures. They flew into Dinard and got a taxi to our house in France, got a bit of shopping in and sorted out the bedding. This gave me the rest of that day free to pootle on down to Portsmouth, careering right on down the Newbury by-pass (remember the horrific suicide dash across Robin Hood roundabout in those pre-by-pass days?) a lovely picnic lunch on the shingle beach at Portsmouth followed by a quick tour of the junk shops in Southsea looking for pretty blue and white plates to add to my collection. Sigh...

A Solero and a short drive to the Cross Channel port and on we go, Brittany Ferries at its finest.  Find the cabin, draw back the curtains and explore said cabin. (I don't know why I do this; it's always the same and there really aren't any hidden cabinets or secret hideaway places in a Brittany Ferries cabin!) Throw the bags onto the berth and straight back out to the restaurant for the first meal in France, usually starting with a salade Nicoise and a glass of wine.

"Is this Heaven?"
"No.  It's Iowa."

Robert Marnock Garden Sheffield

Oh beautiful hellebores, my heart belongs to you.

Arum Italicum: Lords & Ladies

Sheffield Botanical Gardens in early May.