Look out Tesco

and no doubt Saatchi & Saatchi will be seeking out my talents too...

*** Update: I have now sold 4 lots of 3 for 2!

A helpful beginner's guide to flower arranging

Arranging flowers is something that many gardeners try from time to time, but it can be tricky to do with real style.

Try this

A break-in

An eventful afternoon...

I trimmed the clematis up the side of the front door which had grown more than half way across the door. I did some general weeding, the quarry this time being mainly bindweed and dandelions. I did some watering around the conservatory and greenhouse. Then I shredded a load of wild rose prunings - rather a nasty job, got a few scratches. Finally I cleared and mowed the bits of lawn. I intended to do quite a bit more but I was feeling a bit wobbly so didn't hurry things.

Just as I was finishing up I heard Pippa barking, which is unusual. I went into the house and heard a scratching on the front door. So I opened it suddenly - to find it was actually a neighbour who was just accidentally scraping his wing mirror against a nearby telegraph pole. I commiserated with him over the damage and as I did so, heard the front door slam behind me. He kindly lent me a small step-ladder which I used to climb onto the wheely bin at the back of the house and then onto a very narrow wall, topped with trellis with roses climbing through it. From there it looked a long way down. I slithered inelegantly down via the conservatory window-sill. I hope I don't ever have to pursue a career as a house-breaker, I'm really not cut out for it!

My mother-in-law who visited over the week-end has kindly sent this picture she took of muggins reprimanding the leeks for their inadequate growth. I am sitting on a stool you can't see, not the edge of the raised bed. Yes I know you can't see any leeks either - that is exactly my point. I have planted some more.

What I'm up to

Just at the moment we have a visitor staying so we've been out enjoying ourselves. Not that gardening isn't enjoyable, but you know what I mean.

So yesterday we went out to this. Today we watched some cricket at the local ground up the street, then went to Brighton for a walk round North Laine, fish and chips on the beach, and then this in the evening. Tomorrow it's a curry buffet for lunch, then either Tilgate Park or Leonardslee.

We don't normally do so many things though, it's all quite busy!

Why do you write your blog?

I've been wondering about this lately. Well, not so much why others write theirs, as why I write mine and whether this is sufficient reason. I write it for myself, and if others enjoy it that is the icing on the cake. This sounds a bit perverse, but I read something similar in another blog I can't find again now, so it's not just me!

There are two reasons for this. Presenting an account of what I have done in public helps to motivate me to get something done in the first place. Secondly, I live a rather isolated life and publicising my gardening endeavours changes that a little.

I want only those people to read it who actually care about it, so I deliberately try to resist prettification and tricks that might make it more appealing. On the other hand, I hate to think that people might comment because they feel sorry for me, if for example there are no other comments to a particular post: I want them to comment because they had something to say, just as I do. And yet I want reading my blog to be enjoyable for the ones who put a little effort in, so quite often I sneak my nicer pictures in a little further down a posting, as a reward! At other times I weaken and feel more attention-seeking, and I pick a tricksy title (ahem, like this one) and some eye-candy (of a strictly horticultural kind, usually) to start off with.

Originally I didn't intend to blog every day. In fact the plan was quite specific and different, and the blog's URL gives it away. I have an old gardening book, from the 1930s although my edition is 50s, which sets out tasks for the garden on a weekly basis (with further sections on what to do generally over a month too). I wanted to try to keep to it for a year and I thought this would make a good, structured blog. But when I began on the garden it quickly became clear that it needed so much remedial work that there would be no time or energy left to get round to the tasks specified. Now, it seems that perhaps I will manage it some time in the next few weeks, which is very exciting to me! I will say more about the book when that time comes.

But I wonder why other people blog, and what they get out of it, and whether they get in quite as many existential tangles over it as I do?

That was quick!

I will show you what was inside tomorrow.

Meanwhile here's the current view from my study window:



And finally here's a colour-tweaked version of Pippa from yesterday, showing that she's not really a hen!



PS middle picture now brightened

Company in the garden

Today as I was weeding, I felt I was being watched. Can you see him?



These days I rarely see birds in the garden while I'm out, although I see many from the window. Clearly Mr Robin had spotted that my feline companion was out for the count!

Tea in the garden

What good does it do?

I was reading just now a post written by Weaver of Grass, about a train journey in China. It reminded me of the notes I made about travel in Sri Lanka a while back. I intended to write them up: my husband took some amazing pictures, and I planned to put the two together. I didn't get round to it.

My worst fear is of my metaphorical gravestone with the words, where my lifetime's achievement should be, "She didn't get round to it".

Suddenly furious, I ask myself what on earth good it does, all this stuff in the garden. Who cares whether this weed gets pulled up? It will only be back again tomorrow, or next week.

Last summer we tried to sell our house. I tidied up the garden as best I could in a few days, but of course doing it properly takes months and it wasn't terribly successful. But the estate agents hated what we'd done with the garden anyway. They didn't get the point at all. The large stretch of plain grass and two shrub beds that were here before would have been easier to sell.

If I make a huge effort with it, it will look amazing. As good as you see in magazine pictures. Is that what I'm aiming for? I don't buy magazines any more (unless you count the odd copy of Country Smallholding for a spot of fantasising).

And just as suddenly, I come to my senses again. Of course I don't do it for other people, beyond my husband. It's not about approbation and acknowledgement. It is a way of being, which is inseperable from doing.

It's good to create a wake behind you. If nothing else, it helps with the steering. But it won't last. Gardening has to be its own reward. One person more at peace with themselves, and doing very little harm to others, is the good it does. I feel part of it all, of everything around me.

"Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Good.

And on that note, I'm off to turn the compost.

Quick note

Didn't do a great deal today and rather busy with personal stuff, so I'll write today and tomorrow up together, tomorrow :)

PS In the spririt of honest blogging I thought you might like to see this photo of me modelling the latest gardening fashion... ahem! (the hat is a ski one, with a dog's floppy ears and pink tongue, only you can't see them)

Dinner Party

VP, whose blog I have just found (http://vegplotting.blogspot.com/2007/02/dinner-time.html), suggested naming garden-related guests for a dinner party. I'm going to name 5, because I'm feeling gregarious...

1. Graham Stuart Thomas. I've been told he was as nice in person as he seems in his books. His taste and ideas have influenced me enormously, and Mottisfont Abbey is my favourite garden other than our own. He seems to show a fine nature towards many things, as well as plants.

2. My distant relative Deirdre, who is so self-effacing about gardens but knows so much. She would be great company socially too.

3 and 4 -bit of a gamble: my two grandmothers, who met only very briefly. I never met my maternal one. Both were very keen gardeners, unlike my parents, and I would love to talk to them about it.

5. Harold Nicolson. I'm a little sccared that I might not actually like Vita in person, but HN would be interesting for all sorts of reasons :)

Garden Bloggers' Muse Day - poem

The garden blogosphere

We stare into our fires and plan our seeds,
and feast in heated rooms against the cold;
our gardens sleep while others' blaze with green:
a Mexican wave of flowering laps the Earth.

Young human generations unfurl now,
but garden time runs true, life's orrery:
ephemera preserved for them in blogs,
while your reflected sunshine joins our fires.