Tag: garden

Epiphany

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Pale mauve cyclamen flowers and variegated green leaves, shiny with rain, growing in wet ground.

The earth tips back and the light reaches back out to the north, stretches, spreads over us. The sun stays past four o’clock, just a little bit more than eight hours now. The solstice marked the turning point; now I begin to notice.

It’s cold, though. I walked out earlier, just a little way. My loose silky trousers, practical for a healing abdomen, are not so practical for a January walk; I am grateful for my brother’s long-ago recommendation of long-john base layers. I realised, half-way out, that my mind was singing me the enquiry of the Three Kings, the steady four-four of Mendelssohn’s setting keeping pace with my footsteps. Say, where is he born the king of Judea, for we have seen – for we have seen – have seen his star – have see-een his star and are co-ome to ado-ore him – have see-een his star and are co-ome to adore him… These Magi are walking, I think; it isn’t the swaying three-four camel-gait of We Three Kings. Too late, too slow, looking in the wrong place, but getting there in the end.

I caught a glimpse of the cathedral between two houses (you can see it from most places, if you look hard enough) and the flag on the west tower was streaming straight out in a rectangle, like a child’s drawing. The moon, just shy of a quarter, winked through a window of cloud and went away again. I turned, left it at my left shoulder, and turned back towards the sun, and into the wind.

In the garden, the cyclamen have bloomed: sturdy stems, delicate mauve flowers shaped like fantastic head-dresses springing from a rolled band, more outlandish than you’d see in any nativity play. I planted them under the most troublesome of the apple trees, hoping to introduce a little colour against that gloomy fence if nothing else. Suddenly, I’m vindicated.

December Reflections 20: gold

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A packet of 12 gilt plastic apple-shaped Christmas tree decorations

I’ve been spending more time (and also more money) in charity shops this year; it comes of spending more time in town. Yesterday I wandered into the Sue Ryder shop (with some assistance from a kind person who held the door for the pushchair) and found these golden apples. They reminded me immediately of a set of four polystyrene, white-leaved, iridescent-glittered apple-shaped Christmas tree decorations from my childhood. The fight over who got to put them on the tree was always vicious: for some reason the obvious solution, do one each, was unacceptable. So I bought these ones in a fit of nostalgia, and because I was already on a bit of a kick buying tree decorations that the toddler and the cat probably couldn’t break. I hope they’ll turn out to be not so much the apples of discord.

But they sparked some other associations, too. Narnia. Jesus Christ the apple tree. The fascination with orchards and walled gardens and fruit trees that’s been a fixture in my head since we first viewed this house, five winters ago, and realised that the bare trees against the garage wall had labels telling us what sort of pears they were. Martin Luther claiming that even if the world were going to end tomorrow, he would still plant his apple tree. (Was Nevil Shute thinking of that when he wrote his gardening couple facing down the apocalypse in On the Beach?)

The best time to plant an apple tree being twenty years ago. Well, our predecessors in this house did that for us. (Yes, apples as well as pears.) The second best time being now. As for the best time to convert an evergreen into an enchanted tree growing golden apples – well, probably Tuesday.

December Reflections 2: flowers

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Plant with many flower heads, very dark purple, almost black, petals with a white edge. One of the flowers has a raindrop caught on one side, and the leaves and surrounding foliage are very green.

There were some extremely Christmassy flower arrangements in the cathedral a few weeks ago, I assume for the Christmas fair. Gold ribbon and poinsettia and all that sort of thing. Now, of course, they’re all gone, and we’re paying no attention to the huge tree in the corner. Such is the tension between secular Christmas and church Advent.

All this to say that my mind doesn’t go straight to ‘flowers’ on 2 December. But, as you see, there are a few still around. Apart from this delightfully Goth polyanthus, which feels appropriate to the season in colour scheme even if it’s flowering rather earlier than I expected, the French lavender in the front garden is still going, and in the back the Peruvian lilies haven’t given up yet.

I’m beginning to feel more equal to the garden, actually. Last week I finally chopped out the sixth and last dead box bush (devoured by beetles last year along with most of the rest of the country’s) and before that I’d pruned the fruit trees and trimmed the beeches back. There are still a load of wild strawberries to pull up, but it definitely feels like an improvement. Last year I had to get a man in to get it all under control. Worth every penny – but it feels so good to have been able to do it myself this time.

Not a year in a garden, but a garden in a year

kathleenjowitt1 Comment
Close-up of a passion flower; behind it, a small but very green garden

When we moved into this house, the front garden was entirely covered in chips of purple slate. Now it is almost entirely covered in green.

I don’t have a proper ‘before’ photo, because the whole thing was so boring that I never bothered (and when I finally came to getting rid of slate and planting plants I had very limited time and other priorities).

Here you see the boringness relieved by a pot of tulips:

A tub of red and white streaked tulips (and one yellow one) on a floor of purple slate chippings with green weeds growing amongst them

You also see the irritating little weeds that grew among the stones. Shallow roots, but a pig to keep on top of and very obvious, at least when I didn’t have a magnificent tub of tulips to lead the eye elsewhere.

Last autumn, my maternity leave project (and I cannot at this distance think why I thought that this was a good idea) was transforming this into an actual garden, with intentional plants growing in the soil.

You might remember me asking on here for ideas of what to do with a small eastward facing plot that probably wasn’t going to get a lot of watering. A friend suggested that Mediterranean was the way to go. I’ve always loved herbs, so it didn’t take much effort to come up with a plan of rosemary against the house, lavender around the edges, and thyme as ground cover, with peonies (because what the hell, why not) to make the middle interesting. One of our bay trees (wedding present, 14 years ago) could go at the front corner, and what about an olive tree? And I was going to grow a passion flower up the railings.

I got Tony to gather up the slate chips (eventually a friend took them away to cover up a much less promising bit of ground). I ordered some plants from Thompson and Morgan, and quite a lot more from Norfolk Herbs. (I highly recommend Norfolk Herbs, by the way: their prices are extremely good and the delivery was swift.) On a whim, I threw some chamomile and bergamot into the order. The Thompson and Morgan stuff came in dribs and drabs; the Norfolk Herbs, all at once.

And every time I had a spare twenty minutes, when the baby had fed and gone to sleep deeply enough to notice that I’d handed her to someone else, I dashed out the front and put in another two or three plants. I’d leave the front window open so I’d hear when she started crying. I chucked a bulb or two in with each plant – tulips, daffodils, crocus, tête-à-tête, iris… Bit by bit, it got done.

A small garden plot with a few small bright green plants with purple slate chippings scattered on the earth between them

We didn’t get all the slate up first go. For a long time afterwards I was picking up a dozen chips and moving them to the edge every time I went out.

Then, of course, everything went dormant over the winter, and I had to wait to see what was going to happen next.

A small blue iris grows between purple slate chippings. In the background, tulip leaves are emerging.

The bulbs came first. A brave blue iris, then the tête-à-tête narcissi.

A small front garden dotted with emphatic yellow miniature daffodils

It was at this point that I started getting really happy with what I’d done. They cheered things up immensely.

On Mothering Sunday, I was presented with a pot of purple primulas. Those went in too.

Then the tulips flowered.

Red and white streaked tulips, looking rather scraggly among scraggly green herbs

Meanwhile, the herbs were beginning to get going. Come May, there was still quite a bit of earth showing between the plants, but they’d woken up. The bergamot, which I’d thought had maybe died, was very enthusiastic.

Lots of green plants of varying heights and textures, and hardly any purple slate chippings between them.

We got our olive tree, too.

Over the summer, everything went absolutely bananas. The chamomile flowered and went everywhere. The bergamot came out such a gorgeous, vivid deep pink that I felt my whim was vindicated a hundred times over.

Green plants have mostly got tall, and there are white chamomile flowers, deep pink bergamot, and mauve lavender

And it all kept going.

Small garden with exuberant greenery and pink and white flowers

It’s less exuberant now, obviously: it’s November again. And I trimmed the chamomile back, and I’m half way round cutting off the dead lavender flowers. Even so, it’s less tidy than the slate was, but it’s much more cheerful and welcoming – not least for the bees. I was rather pleased to read, several months into this process, that:

If you want to help a variety of bees, the best way is to plant flowers that bloom sequentially from early spring to late autumn – even if you only have a window box or pots on a patio.

Which I seem to have achieved almost accidentally. I’m glad the bees are enjoying it. I certainly am.

Equinox

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A bee rests on a lavender head, on which only a few flowers are still blooming

It felt rather appropriate to be sitting in the conservatory yesterday, looking out at the roses still just about blooming and ripe apples on the trees, drinking the tea that came with this season’s Ffern perfume, and embroidering a reindeer into a baby hat. Today we rotated the mattress. It’s not exactly a ritual; it’s just that we’re more likely to remember to do it if we link it with the solstices and equinoxes.

I tend to mark the changing of the seasons by the cross-quarter days (I find it less depressing that way) so for me, autumn began at Lammas, at the beginning of August. That doesn’t mean that the half-way point isn’t important, though. It still looks very green outside, but when I look a second time there are a few red and orange leaves, and tonight there’s a patter of rain on the conservatory roof, and the promise of more.

Week-end: let’s try this again

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Textile artwork representing a map of the London area of Bloomsbury with quotations from notable women associated with the area
Artwork by Margaret Talbot at the Bridging the Gap exhibition at Babylon Arts

The good

Summer! It’s sunny, but it’s not too outrageously hot. I opened up the new Ffern perfume at about seven in the morning on the summer solstice. Gorgeous.

The mixed

OK, it’s a bit muggy.

The difficult and perplexing

A gallstone attack when I was out for a walk. Extremely painful and unpleasant. Had to retreat under a shady tree and be sick into a hedge in relative private. I am on the waiting list to have my gall bladder removed. I continue to wait.

What’s working

I’ve been playing around with bullet journalling, in its original iteration as a glorified to-do list, and not bothering trying to make it pretty. It’s actually working pretty well as a way to keep track of the sixteen different mixed metaphorical plates I have spinning.

Reading

I devoured She Who Became The Sun (Shelley Parker-Chan). It’s great. It’s a historical epic with a little magical realism, and is particularly inspiring to me at the moment in that the author simply decided to have fun (I am paraphrasing what she says in her acknowledgements here) and created an excellent book. I should note that it’s fairly bleak and occasionally very gory, and a few months ago I wouldn’t have been able to cope with it at all.

Elsewhere, I got through the long long nights with the whole of the Chalet School series (Elinor M. Brent-Dyer). I have gone back and begun again at the beginning (just finished Exile last night), but I also took a little side-step and tried out the Crater School series (Chaz Brenchley). Also a load of fun: it’s a pitch-perfect homage and is, you know, a boarding school story on Mars.

Then I picked up Cinderella Ate My Daughter (Peggy Orenstein), which takes a look at the consumer culture surrounding children, particularly girls. It was published in 2011, and I couldn’t help wondering how different it would look post-Frozen, and after Britney-gate. There’s also barely any mention of trans identities, which in 2024 seems an obvious angle to explore. I should probably be grateful.

Writing

Bits and pieces.

Making

A little smocked dress. I finished the front and then decided that the back also needed to be smocked, so I’m back in the tedious gathering stage.

Watching

The Great British Sewing Bee. I am behind on Doctor Who, but having been spoiled for the last couple of episodes I’m not sure that I’ll make the effort to catch up.

Looking at

Bridging the Gap, an exhibition by women textile artists, all members of EAST (East Anglian Stitch Textiles) at Babylon Arts. I was rather taken by a whimsical map of Bloomsbury embellished with quotations from notable women associated with the area, but my favourite pieces were probably Margaret Talbot‘s gorgeous landscapes.

Cooking

Beef pot roast in the Instant Pot. It’s not exactly the weather for it, but at least the pressure cooker minimises the cooking heat.

Eating

We went out to Wildwood for our anniversary; I had bruschetta, seafood linguine, and tiramisu.

Moving

A very, very gentle run-up (ha) to Couch to 5k, beginning with a lot more walking even than that routine recommends. So far, so good.

Noticing

Goldfinches!

In the garden

Complete chaos, but this evening I have managed to take the compost out, water the passion flower on the front fence, and pull up a few weeds.

Appreciating

Suddenly having a little more time to myself.

Acquisitions

Mostly clothes: four dresses from the Joanie sale, a sports bra, and ankle socks. Yesterday I took three books to the book swap cabinet at the top of the hill – and came home with two. Oh well.

Line of the week

From Cinderella Ate My Daughter:

While Zoe is cute, in a radioactive orange kind of way, her release fell short of expectations, the – ka-ching! – hope of creating a female Elmo. Even slapping a tutu on her did not help.

This coming week

What’s become the regular routine – and will be for a few weeks more – and then a very busy weekend.

That’s it for the moment. I’m hoping to keep this going, but no promises. I hope you’re all keeping well.

Outsourcing

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Close-up of a vine leaf, mostly yellow-green but speckled with red towards the edges

The garden is running wild, and has been since the summer. It’s been on my conscience, too. It looks a little tidier now that the leaves are falling, but it’s also more obvious how much needs trimming back and cutting down now that it isn’t just a mass of green.

So today I had someone round to give me a quote for tidying it up and, as he put it, putting it to bed for the winter. I’d love to be able to do it myself, but it just isn’t going to happen. This is the next best option.

Monday making, mending and growing

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A pram with a rucksack slung from the handles, a cushion in the body, and a trailing plant in a blue carrier back also slung from the handle.
These days I usually find myself going out with the baby in the pram, and coming back with the baby in the sling and the shopping in the pram. This was the day I bought a passion flower, two cakes, a box of cereal, and a cushion…

Not much to report other than in the garden, but I want to establish the Monday format while I remember what it is I think I’m doing. I now have all the components for my big winter skirt. I also have ideas for a couple of quilts. What I don’t have, or not for long enough to get anything done, is free hands. I’m hopeful that a baby bouncer may help there…

In the back garden, chaos continues to reign. I am meaning to get out and pick the blackberries before the devil spits (or worse) on them at Michaelmas, but I have a nasty feeling that’s as far as it’s going to go. In the front garden, I co-opted my youngest brother to plant a passion flower to replace the two that died in the heat. Tony has cleared several bags’ worth of slate chippings and all of the membrane, and the next step is for me to order some more plants to fill in the gap. I have managed to put half a dozen bulbs in with my own hands while someone else holds the baby, or she takes a (very short) nap. It’s slow going, but then gardening often is.

Summer-end: big milk thing

kathleenjowitt1 Comment

Whoosh. Suddenly it’s six weeks later and we’re rounding off August with a blue moon. It seemed like a good moment to pick things up again over here.

The good

The baby is delightful, and gets more interesting by the day. It’s lovely, too, seeing others’ reactions. So many people are genuinely pleased to see her, friends and strangers and the guy I know by sight but whose name is a mystery.

We have succeeded in getting out of the house. Several times. There was my birthday; there was Pride; there was the Cursillo study day (labyrinths); there was a barbecue at my aunt’s; there were at least three church services.

The difficult and perplexing

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I would say the same thing at times that are not three in the morning. It’s the being on duty all the time.

It’s the first time in years I haven’t been in Ventnor for Fringe week. (I did have a weird feeling last year that It Was All Going To Be Different, though I hadn’t guessed how or why.) I lived it vicariously on the Instagram hashtag.

Hormones. I spent the first month crying about pretty much everything. (Child is not feeding. Child will not stop feeding. Child is small and utterly dependent on me. I wish Pa could have seen her…) Plus, of course, the lack of sleep.

What’s working

Having my mother to stay. Coke (the fizzy sort). Keeping in touch with other adults over the internet. A sausage-shaped cushion thing that ties on behind my back. Remembering that this is my only job at the moment.

Also, let me stop a moment to extol the Really Useful Boxes. Because they are. Quite apart from storing baby clothes and nappies and toys, I’ve been using them as footstools, for handwashing, and for catching and evicting a huge spider. And the cat likes sitting on them.

A fluffy black and white cat sits on a clear plastic box

Reading

A couple of ‘how on earth do I do this motherhood thing’ books: What Mothers Do (especially when it looks like nothing) (Naomi Stadlen); The Gentle Sleep Book (Sarah Ockwell-Smith). Both useful in confirming that I wasn’t missing something obvious, it really is this intense, and there’s only so much you can do before you just decide that this is the way things are and you’re going to go with it; both, I think, pushing back against the Gina Ford school of babyraising (which seems to have fallen out of favour among the professionals, at least in our neck of the woods). Of the two, the Stadlen is the keeper.

The Balloonists: the history of the first aeronauts by L. T. C. Rolt. Rolt was most famously the author of Red for Danger, the absolute classic of disaster analysis. There’s a certain amount of disaster in this (as you’d expect given the quantity of hydrogen used in the early days of ballooning) but it’s by no means the whole story. The whole story is very interesting and engagingly told.

Feeling in need of something trashy I reread Glittering Images (Susan Howatch) and began Glamorous Powers before deciding that really I wanted to read about scandalous bishops more than psychic manpain. So I have abandoned Starbridge and moved on to Lindford (Acts and Omissions, Catherine Fox).

Writing

Nothing to speak of in terms of new words on new pages, but I should have some news on an older project soon.

Making

I’m planning a full skirt in olive green with lilypad patches. Need to do some maths and obtain the olive green…

Watching

A lot of daytime TV. I’m particularly enjoying The Repair Shop at the moment; I’ve been thinking a lot over the past couple of years about physical objects and sentimental value, about what things mean and how good it is when something can keep on doing the job it was made to do.

I’ve also returned to Ghosts, and this time managed to get past the second-hand embarrassment of the early episodes and into the kinder, more constructive stories of season 2.

Before that there was the world athletics championships; before that there was the super combined world cycling championships; before that there was the Tour de France.

Looking at

Pretty cars gathered outside the cathedral. Some gorgeous work by Ely Guild of Woodturners (who, if any of them are reading this, ought all to be charging twice as much for their pieces as they currently do).

Cooking

Is pretty much impossible with a baby. I did manage to pickle some plums (and regret leaving the jars in the conservatory in the hottest month of the year) and, several weeks after that, make the topping of a crumble.

Eating

A lot of ready meals. The charming snackpot that Tony assembles and brings me before he goes to bed and leaves me to the night shift (this evening’s contained two sorts of pretzels, dried apricots, crystallised ginger, a chocolate digestive biscuit, and three Mikado sticks.) And a reuben sandwich at the last (and, for me, only) Foodie Friday market of the year.

Moving

A little bit of walking.

Playing

Whatever will keep me from falling asleep with a baby on my lap. Minesweeper, mostly.

Noticing

Dragonflies. Or are they damselflies? I’m not sure what the difference is. Butterflies. Sunflowers. Hollyhocks.

In the garden

Chaos in the back (it is, infuriatingly, a really good year for fruit, and I’m not managing to get out to pick it, and if I were I wouldn’t get round to doing anything with it). Progress at the front, where we have much less in the way of slate chippings and much more in the way of lavender and thyme.

Appreciating

All the people who have come to see us, sent messages, cards and presents, and generally provided solidarity in a massive life change. The Rosie Birth Centre and the community midwifery team.

Acquisitions

Leaving aside all the baby gifts, or we’d be here all night: a lovely turned elm bowl from the woodturners’ exhibition; a couple more Joanie dresses; a whole load of plants (Norfolk Herbs: very reasonable); more fabric patches than I actually needed; some Pride tat.

Hankering

I haven’t been to the seaside this year other than incidentally, and I’d really like to. I don’t think it’s going to happen, though.

Line of the week

L. T. C. Rolt on the develoment of the dirigible:

Unholy marriages were consummated – most of them only on paper, fortunately – between the balloon, the kite, the ornithopter and the helicopter.

The cat’s current preferred location

In the conservatory, either on top of a large cardboard box, or on the windowsill for optimum garden surveillance.

How has your summer been? Have you also given up on Twitter, or were you never on it in the first place? What’s your social medium of choice these days?

Week-end: little to tell (which doesn’t really help)

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Elaborate appliqué panel depicting the Garden of Eden

The good

Out and about. It is very good to not have Covid any more. It is also fun to have the use of a car.

The mixed

People are thinking of me! Which is lovely. But they all want to know how I am doing. Which is difficult, because there is very little to tell, and I tend to find that a problem shared is a problem doubled because I then feel that I have to deal with their feeling bad for me on top of the feeling bad myself. For this reason I am mostly hiding, at least from people I know.

The difficult and perplexing

Heat + waiting + hearing about other people’s relevant and irrelevant experiences and opinions = getting stressed and scared

Also, heat = dehydration = a horrible headache that had me worrying all night about pre-eclampsia. And eventually being very sick.

Also, something has been eating my legs and I don’t know whether it’s mosquitoes getting in at night or whether there are still fleas in the sofa.

What’s working

Airplane mode. Except I do need to know when the midwife wants to see me, so that’s not an option today…

And having a good cry or three. And yawning.

Reading

Continuing with Clorinda’s circle, because they are good friends and, while many distressing things happen, they mostly do so off-screen and also I already know about them all.

This morning I started Beryl: in search of Britain’s greatest athlete (Jeremy Wilson): very good so far.

Writing

I did a bit of work on Don’t Quit The Day Job but have mostly Not Been In The Mood (must try taking laptop into the garden; half the trouble is that my study is too hot).

Making

I finished the two-flannels-and-a-popper thing and can now use the very very ends of bars of soap.

Watching

Some Wimbledon. Some Tour de France. Some Giro Donne. But my concentration is not great at the moment and I am finding it difficult to get engaged, so not very much of any of them these last few days.

Looking at

Threads Through Creation (twelve panels of silk appliqué representing the Genesis creation stories) at Ely Cathedral. Medieval art and Mediterranean embroidery at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. Local history at Ely Museum.

Also, Ben’s Yard, which is a new shopping village between Ely and Soham. Rather underwhelming so far, although the climbing frame (in the shape of Ely Cathedral) is magnificent.

Cooking

Baked gnocchi from the Roasting Tin book (I have concluded that our oven runs ten degrees cooler than advertisted).

Eating

A Fitzbillies Chelsea bun. A dismal chickpea curry at the pub (I suspect the efficacy of curry is a myth, but it’s a good excuse, if the curry is good – which this wasn’t).

Playing

I got PomoFarm on the grounds that it’s four quid and worth a shot. I haven’t yet decided whether it’s working for me. (I’m not sure whether the pomodoro method itself works for me.)

Noticing

A tiny door (there are a few around Cambridge) made to look like that of No. 10 Downing Street, with purple tentacles emerging from around the edge. (Well, it would explain a lot…)

In the garden

I have started work on the front garden. Two passion flowers to grow up the railings, one rosemary plant, and six lavender plants (Lidl were doing boxes of three for four quid). That row will be finished by bringing one of the bay trees round to the front, but it’s going to take more, stronger people (I can barely manage a watering can at the moment), possibly with a trolley of some sort. The good thing about the horrible slate chippings is that they’re on top of plastic sheeting which can be pulled up a bit at a time.

In the back garden, the runner beans are just beginning to flower; so are the tomatoes; and one of the chilli plants has produced a flower. I have forgotten which chilli was which, which may have been a mistake.

Appreciating

The cat’s been very sociable these last couple of days. It’s been nice.

Acquisitions

Plants, as detailed above. Also a new lampshade for the sitting room, in what turned out to be a perfect match for the barszcz coloured wall. This means that we can replace the hideous ribbon-and-plastic-crystal one in my study/the nursery with the boring but inoffensive lilac one we previous haddown there.

In the Emmaus charity shop: a large reel of black yarn which I intend to use for darning; a cafetière (sometimes one needs to provide more than one person at a time with decent coffee); and a paperback copy of Madam, Will You Talk?

And, in hankerings fulfilled (well, almost), a garden table (currentlyh in bits) and a filleting knife. I must go and buy another fish somewhere.

Hankering

Really I just want this baby to show up.

Line of the week

I remember loving this line (from ‘Had we never loved sae kindly, we had ne’er been broken-hearted’ in A Man of Independent Mind) the first time round, too.

O my dear, says Clorinda with a tearful laugh, sure ’tis no matter upon which one may make mathematical calculations of degrees of infelicity.

Sunday snippet

Mostly I’ve been moving things around, but this bit’s new:

And sure, the Tour de France is never going to be an option for me, for any number of reasons. But I could quite easily get to a standard where the London to Brighton ride was a realistic proposition. I’d just need to put the miles in. It’s exactly the same principle with writing, and with a much smaller chance of road rash.

This coming week

I intend to hide, mostly. How many how are you? questions can I avoid?

Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!