One of Everything

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

I worked in the back garden yesterday for the first time in months. There's nothing there at the moment - we're in the middle of a huge revamping project, and so there's mainly just bare (well, weedy) earth, doomed concrete and two unfeasibly vast piles of topsoil (need any topsoil?) - apart from three plants in temporary accommodation (an apparently immortal hydrangea; a new cotoneaster I got for Christmas; and a formerly lovely pittosporum, which I suspect of being dead), three big amaryllis bulbs speculatively housed in pots when I dug them up last August, and billions of pots full of spring bulbs. They're mostly tulips, with some sparaxis (already in full leaf) and erythronium (no sign as yet). My daffodils and crocuses are all in the front - beginning to show, but no buds.

I watered the pots, pulled some weeds, moved a few things from point A to point B, and then ... there wasn't really anything else for me to do. I couldn't go out in the front because the Oyster (two and a half) was ensconced in the back with his spades and his rake and a complicated stone-moving game, and it wouldn't have been safe to leave him.

So instead, I pottered between the kitchen and the monstrosities (ramshackle structures that huddle against the back of the house and are coming DOWN as soon as we can afford to replace them; we refer to them by the entirely inappropriate labels, dreamed up by the estate agent, of "sun room" and "garage"), making a minor impression on the chaotic tangle of DIY and gardening stuff, and reclaimed some house plants that had been sitting in the cold since before the winter. (Organised, me. "It'll only be for a few weeks," I told them when I put them out there.)

The biggest hippeastrum bulb seems to have shrunk somewhat, but it has a simply enormous root system. I've deleafed it, removed the compost and put it in a paper bag on top of the boiler. I'll repot it in a few weeks and hope it recovers. I've had that bulb since 2001, and it's never failed to flower. Its two daughters are now on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. They both still have green leaves on them, and I left them in their pots. One flowered last year; the other hasn't yet.

The four sections of the spathiphyllum I divided and repotted in the autumn are now on the kitchen table. One of them looks as though it may not make it; the others might. Also on the kitchen table is a bowl with three hyacinths (City of Haarlem) just beginning to bud. They might do OK - I've neglected them horribly, though, so I'm placing no bets.

I composted the tête-à-tête from last year: they've been in full leaf for weeks and not a sign of a bud. I also got rid of the MANKY, RATTY, AWFUL spider plant from the shower room, replacing it with the rather nicer looking specimen that used to be in the living room. I tidied it up quite a bit, and it doesn't look too bad, for a spider plant. I don't like them much, which I suppose is why I neglect them until they look frightful and then put off throwing them on the compost heap because they're perfectly healthy, damn them. If this one gets on my nerves, it's a goner. I swear. We shall see.

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Friday, September 08, 2006

Episode 0: In which we are introduced


We bought our house in November 2001, and moved in just after Christmas of that year. The back (or rather, side) garden was a small, spiky wilderness - a few evergreen things, lots of seedheads, unkempt undergrowth - spilling out over a gravel strip along the house and a narrow slate path that led to a small greenhouse. We'd met the garden first in early autumn, when it had looked enthusiastic but a bit raddled. Had seen better days, we thought.

The front was more straightforward, consisting as it did of a hedge along the boundary, a small bed and two substantial planters beside the house, and a triangular bed at the corner containing a spindly cherry, sundry small perennials and a wicked old chaenomeles. Around at the front of the house was a small specimen tree, weeping, perhaps four feet tall; also some cordylines, one or two other saplings (unclear whether deliberately planted or not), and a variegated ivy growing up over a huge, unlikely anchor. Yes, anchor.

That first winter I learnt how much I love losing myself in the garden: going out in the late morning and working, working, working until after dark (in January, we must note, this is not very late) with just a brief pause for lunch. I was impatient (ha!) to set about making the garden my own, but I knew I should wait to see what was there before doing anything rash. (I couldn't resist buying seeds, though, when spring arrived.)

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