4 posts tagged “plants”
I miss my blog. It seems a luxury to be able to sit down and spill the contents of my brain into the laptop, these days. During my filming travels recently, I have had a hundred ideas for posts, some of which made it into the rather indecipherable post of a few days ago, in one or two word form, but most of which have plopped unceremoniously into the bog of forgetfulness.
Of course, I miss the people I love, and would love to see more of, more than I miss my blog. I haven't spoken to my sister properly all week, for example, when usually we're connected by the umbilliphone every few days. And when I arrive home from another few days filming, I prefer to interact with The G rather than the broadband cable. Ack, that sounded rude somehow. Totally unintentional, I assure you.
I pity the fool who puts the internet before real life. But I suppose, in these times of maximum work and minimum free time, if I were to update regularly, my friends and (selected members of) my family would at least know that I am still plodding on, and as beyond comprehension as ever.
Ah, blog posts about blogging. Don't you just adore them? Logging on to someone's blog, hoping for some juicy divorce, pregnancy or at least vague emotional trauma, and instead you get: Who am I? What blog I? And why?
Or alternativey: I blog, therefore I am (a geek).
Anyway: mwah, bokker.vox.com, mwah. I heart writing in you.
So, in the spirit of catching up with myself, here are some snapshots of past week in Bokland:
Last Sunday heralded the arrival of two new and exciting additions to the living room: a rug and a coffee table. Truly we are grown-ups now. Also, seeing as I destroyed the wooden floors by dancing on NYE and peppering the florboards with pock-marks from the ragged metal stumps which used to be shoe heels, the rug has proved quite fortuitous in helping me not to cry when looking downwards. The coffee table, too, is a friend indeed. No longer must I balance the laptop on my crossed legs, where it threatens at any moment to tip over and land delete-button first, onto some part of my anatomy, and erase whatever masterpiece I am creating.
Oof, this is tiring. Perhaps it's too ambitious to think I can catch up with all my blogging today.
Hey, but you should go and see the Guillemots.* They are bloody brilliant live. But if you do and go and see them, make sure not to stand next to a coterie of Mean Girls and their gay sidekick, who stand with arms folded throughout the show, muttering bitchinesses. Especially don't listen to their conversations, if you don't want to hear them talking about your boobs. Yes, really. There was one chief bitch- the prettiness, blondest, poutiest, meanest of them all. She held court with Gay Best Friend at her shoulder. The others were plainer, and gathered around Chief Bitch and the GBF. Whenever they started to twitch their shoulders or hum along with the songs, a sharp comment from CB would put them in their place. Maybe they wanted to enjoy themselves. How very dare they? Chief Bitch gave me a number of dirty looks throughout the show. I was so close to putting my sweaty, actually-having-good-time face up to the face of CB, and saying: "Listen honey, I'm older and nicer than you, and I was bullied at school by girls like you. You are like so ten years ago. And these friends? They don't like you, and they'll ditch you as soon as they get an ounce of self-belief. And if you're not having fun, you know where the door is". But I didn't, obviously.
Also, it was Valentines Day this week, of course. When I first got together with The G, my sisters would ridicule me because any question they asked about what we had done at the weekend and whether we'd had a good time, would be answered with a list of what food G had cooked for me and everything else we might also have eaten. Our first anniversary? Lovely, thanks. We had sticky toffee pudding and bailey's ice cream. A minibreak to Paris? Very romantic, lots of croissants. Moving into our first home? A great excuse for fish and chips. But for a girl like me who loves her food, I've just never been able to quite believe that I got a guy who used to be a chef, and have always considered it to be one of the cleverest things I have ever done. He totally used his cooking skills to reel me in, seven (yikes) years ago. So in time-honoured tradition, this was our Valentines Day: smoked salmon with creme fraiche-scrambled eggs; duck breast with mustard mash and curly kale; Nigella's molten chocolate babycakes. And by the way, they're not Nigella's, they're mine.
In other news, the yarden will soon be making a re-appearance round these parts. It has been sitting there, all brown and twiggy and cold, throughout the winter. Whenever I looked out of the window, I would feel vaguely guilty at my neglect, even though Alan Titchmarsh (whose book I actually bought today- The Gardener's Year. You see, there is a level of cool which is just so beyond cool, beyond ironically-cool even, that it is just unbelievably cool. And that's where buying Alan's book registers. Um.) assures me that this is not laziness on my part, but that "February finds gardeners looking for some real gardening to do". Indeed, he even advises me that whilst "the first shafts of weak spring sun are all it takes for container-fever to strike", I must resist the urge to tear off my clothes and hurl myself onto my flowerpots wearing nothing but my gardening apron. "Bide your time", he warns, or "if you can't wait, make the most of evergreens for now". And so I must simply gaze at my bay tree and cast aside the feeling that leaving the yarden alone during winter is not tantamount to leaving your leg hair to grow wild or your eyebrows amok. It is all part of the circle of life. Having said that, container-fever did strike briefly this morning, and I attacked some of my lavender and herbs with secateurs.
There are already signs of new life. I have a pot of snowdrops in full bloom (in as much as a snowdrop is ever in full bloom), and a few innonocent, transculent little broad bean shoots pushing their way through the soil, waiting for nasty squirrels to bite their heads off.
And I wait, trowel poised, for Spring to come around and the yarden party to begin.
*Edited to add link, because I'm in a linky mood. But please be warned, there are inappropriate naked ladies in the coments sections of the Guillemots myspace page.
It's been a long time since I gave a yarden update. In fact, the Tomato Saga has been progressing quietly without a mention on this blog. You may recall, oh one and only reader of mine, that I was waiting for the tomatoes to turn red. Gah! Just turn red, dammit!
Well, I'm pleased to report that we have been eating fresh garden-grown tomatoes for about four weeks now, and they are still ripening in their dozens on the vine.
My tomatoes are not the traditional, upwards-growing kind, they are "tumbling toms", which don't need staking, and look rather purty, I think, cascading over the sides of their pots.
The leaves have been getting bushy, and have been yellowing as the tomatoes suck all the nutrients from the plants. I took the advice of Monty Don (as passed on by our friend Pol), and cut back all the leaves from two of the plants, leaving the other ones full and bushy, as an experiment. The brazilian versus the au naturel look, you could say.
They are delicious. Mmmmm...
The tomatoes make me feel happy. They really do. I have grown them from seed and now I am eating their spawn. As my dad said when I was waxing lyrical about the toms: "Ah... when your babies have babies...".
I also have other babies, some of whom are having babies too. My chillis have been a surprising and delightful success (I grew them from seed too, mo fos).
Our yarden is not sophisticated. It's not the biggest garden ever. It will never win Britain in Bloom, nor will it be Homes & Gardens magazine. It is kind of thrown together, full of different shapes and sizes. I try stuff, and some of it is a glorious, colourful, joyful success; and some of it is a withering, shrinking failure.
(Substitute "Britain in Bloom" for "Britain's Next Top Model", and "Homes and Gardens" for "Glamour", and it's kind of like me)
But I love its cream paint over worn red brick walls, it's ramsackletasticness and the abundance of little leaves I can stroke and sing to. I love it that I can nip outside and get stuff we can eat to chuck into whatever we're cooking. I love the bees buzzing around (not for long now) and the evening sunlight through the leaves when I lie on the floor.
Yardening truly makes me feel happy. And that (trying to avoid sounding too cheesy here) is a gift. I will miss it when it's winter.
The end of September is drawing closer (which means it's nearly my birthday, woo! October 2nd- if I have any stalkers, I would like some diamonds please), and it's still unusually warm here in Blighty. My chilli plants are heavy with fruit, my tomato plants are still bursting with crimson. My lavender plants- I've decided to collect lavender, for the information of aforementioned stalkers who might buy me birthday presents- are poking their flowery arms in all directions with no sense of decorum.
But it's getting darker earlier, the sun is lower when I walk to the bus stop in the mornings. And I sit here, in the glow of the Lamps of Delight, wrapped in a snuggly blanket as I blog. Yes, autumn is coming (isn't "autumn" so much evocative a word than "fall"?), and after the hot hot hot summer we have had, I have to say I am looking forward to it.
I am looking forward to cracking open my Nigella cookbooks and baking some spicy, steaming cakes and buns on a chilly Sunday. I am looking forward to showcasing my patent mary janes (much too sweaty for summer) with a pencil skirt, tights and a cashmere jumper, without melting. I am looking forward to snuggling my face into my scarf against the cold, and slipping my fingers into my soft brown leather gloves again. I want to curl up by candlelight deep in the sofa, drawing thick curtains against inky, freezing skies; and pull the goose feather duvet around me in bed, instead of kicking it off in boiling frustration.
I can't wait to finish this project- the Project of Despair (much blogged about)- only four weeks left!- and maybe having a week off to visit lovely friend Ben, who will finish his PHD at roughly the same time. I wonder what programme I will be working on next, and I hope it will be less sad.
I want autumn TV schedules full of stay-at-home dramas (already kicking off with the excellent Spooks, which actually I am currently not watching, because I have attention span difficulties), winter clothes in the shops and nights in the pub... maybe we'll even rediscover the pub quiz!
I want to find out what happens to plants in the winter, to cut back summer foliage and push hopeful bulbs into the cold earth with numb fingertips. I want to discover a whole new level of Gardening Patience, as I watch my "babies" shrivel and freeze, knowing, hoping they will sprout again in the spring.
I want to stash Christmas presents in the spare room and think hopefully of a Christmas which might be less pain-filled than the last; to celebrate New Year without breaking into sobs because H is not here.. another year without her in it. I want to look at the new university freshers, striding boofusly down Oxford Rd with their brand new rucksacks, without getting a lump in my throat because it should be her.
Some things I can't have this autumn. But many things I can, and I say- bring it on. Enough air conditioning, enough drinking in the evening sun, enough Sundays spent feeling like I ought to be on an adventurous outdoor day trip rather than reading the News of the World and gulping back coffee.
Enough summer. Bring on Autumn.
ps October 2nd, stalkers.
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It started last November, three months after we bought our house in Manchester. Our red-brick terrace had a completely empty, paved smallish garden. It had concrete slabs, a small shed, a couple of weeds, and nothing else. More of a yard than a garden. A yarden, in fact.
During the remnants of summer 2005, we had a few barbeques, and it was great, because we could fit around a dozen people in the yarden. There was nothing to take up the space. No flowers, no herbs, no trees, no plants at all. Just concrete.
But I didn't want to be able to fit a dozen people in the yarden. Something about owning my first house gave me stirrings that I had never felt before. I wanted the yarden to be filled with leaves and petals, with the smell of herbs and lavender and roses, with things we might be able to pick and eat. I wanted it to be so full of leafy stuff that we would have to squeeze barbeque guests around the abundant flora.
So I planted some bulbs, and in the Spring there were snowdrops, daffodils and some green shoots which tried, but didn't quite manage, to be tulips. Armed with a book about container gardening, I have gradually expanded our collection of plants.
Yardening is the most rewarding, healing hobby (and it curbs my urges for a real baby!). Today we painted the wall- from nasty, chipped red, to glossy cream.
And then there are the tomatoes. How I love the tomatoes. I love them so much I may even devote an entire post to them.
You lucky things.
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