Declutter, Haul, Restock, Repeat I find this fascinating, I find these accounts fascinating especially the fridge restocks, so much UPF, and so much consumption..
Sue and I went to Cliveden last week, which is an National Trust property and I just found out for every visitor that comes the site gets £3.90 in funding..
The gardens are great and I really enjoyed the Long Garden because veg!
The Long Garden
The grounds are lovely, hilly but lovely.
So many stairsThe river No idea what these are but they are fabulous Never knowingly under picnicked!
The unexpectedly magical find was the Round Garden. It’s an orchard laid out in the 19th Century and maybe the only surviving example of this planting style. The trees are trained to grow either side of a hoop, so you walk through tunnels of apple and pear trees. The orchard fell out of use in the 1950’s and became a haven for wildlife, the ranger team at Cliveden are gently restoring it but trying to maintain the wildlife diversity.
If I ever have the theoretical homestead then this is the type of orchard I want!
Being a National Trust property there were plants to buy, so I did!
My birthday week off, didn’t go quite to plan! I’ve officially been to my mum’s GP practice more this year than I’ve been to my own! Ma will probably read this and feel bad, but she shouldn’t, but it did mean that my week was more bus, less allotment than planned.
I did go to places besides my mum’s house and GP last week though. On Wednesday, Sue and I went to Cliveden. The last time I was there, was for a Guide camp over 30 years ago. It was a lovely day.
Dinner with Jo and the sidekick!
On Friday, Christelle and I went to the Physic Garden in Chelsea and had a wander around.
This week is work and watering and mother things. I’ve come back to quite a bit of work and this Monday was officially the hottest day of the year. It’s all going to be fine!
I know I’ve been missing in action for most of July and large part of the year. You know what? That’s ok, I’m not doing this for the views – I started this blog back when I lived at my uncle’s in Fulham and it pulled me out of a hole. I’m never going to be an influencer because I have too many things I’m interested in, I’m no good at teaching and I’m the queen of ‘can’t be arsed’. So I’m not going to stress too much!
Life has felt busy this year, my life is currently full of shoulds and musts and while I am grateful for most of the shoulds and musts (because money, a place to live and people that I love are really good things to have) I’m contrary and I’m not enjoying it. If I ever wonder why I’m single and childless, this essentially is the essence of it, I don’t like to commit!
All that being said, July has been a trickier month than I expected. There was good stuff, a new government, an allotment open day (and a gold award for the plot), a work day in Southampton, lots of work godchildren back from Uni, a beer festival, a walk and lunch with Christelle and the dogs, the Euro finals (I finally bought a TV license so I could watch England play badly and then lose. I know we deserved to lose but it wasn’t fun) COVID from the newly returned godchildren (which included the worse non migraine headache I’ve had in forever). Working from home is great, it really reduces sick leave, because you can go and sleep when you need to and then send documents out at 10:12pm. I didn’t really rest because I’m in that place, there is no rest, there is retirement or death, I’ll rest then!
Finally on the last weekend of the month, Ma had another fall, a really bad one and she knocked herself out. we both got to add a ride in an ambulance to the list of things we’ve not done before and 9 hours in A&E later, via some stitches and a CT scan, we went home. I have been expressive in my love for the NHS but the problem with a service that is grossly underfunded, is that it’s focus is on crisis, not prevention. Ma’s balance has become a huge problem, but because she doesn’t break anything, they just send her home. I’m about to become a very squeaky wheel to get her a referral to the falls clinic and to get some investigation of why her balance has become so terrible over the last couple of months.
So I’m hopeful that August will be better, but we’ll see. This week, is actually my birthday week and I do have some plans. I’m going to spend a day with Sue at either Kew Gardens or Cliveden, dinner with Jo and the Chelsea Physic Garden with Christelle. I do want to spend some time on the plot but I’m also going to the doctors with Ma so she can get her stitches removed. Before that, this morning I need to do a small amount of work for reasons I won’t talk about (but it wasn’t me!) and then holiday!
I’m short of temple and words this week, here are some allotment photos!
This bed has chives, the beans that survived slugmageddon, three tumbling Tom tomatoes, pansies and some marigolds.Blackcurrant sage, cola bottle plant, lavender that will need to move soon and there’s some Corsican mint and chamomile lawn in there tooBrassicas all in, cauliflower, two beds of cabbage, brussel sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli and calebrese.Strawberries, enough to eat but not enough to useThe first raspberry JasmineTomatoes didn’t like going outside but it’s plant Sparta, they live or they die Some of the tomatoes are doing the right thingDaisies that I did not plant or plan..Plenty more work to do!
I’m really beginning to worry about the lack of thinking capacity and callousness of voters. Who are the people who think that Nigel Farage would make a good MP? Actually, I know some of them and it would be easy to classify them as ‘hard of thinking’, the truth is more that they don’t want to think too hard. They want certainty about the world and their place in it. They want it to be easy. That’s why it’s easier to blame immigrants and people who don’t want to work or spend all their money on avocado toast, than the system for why things are harder than maybe they were for their parents. It’s about a lack of rigour and honesty from the ‘mainstream’ politicians about what it would actually take to sort out the mess. Finally, it’s about the Press and the people that own it, promoting easy solutions rather than decency. However, the Farage is the worse sort of charlatan who can dish it and lie about it and can’t take it. It’s obvious by now. I really hope the voters of Clacton are bright enough and care enough to see it and not vote for him.
‘Solidarity over hatred’: the small band of Israelis stopping settlers obstructing aid trucks. I know it’s a drop in the ocean but I think it’s really important to highlight this. The sides are so polarised and I keep hearing that I can’t ‘both sides’ this conflict. I absolutely can and I will. So I blame both Hamas AND the Israeli government and the Western governments (including my own) that allow this to continue. However, it’s important to remember not all Palestinians are Hamas and not all Israelis support their government’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
England’s Euro 2024 squad: Grealish and Maguire miss out on final 26. I don’t have a TV so I don’t get to watch England games as often as I’d like (that’s changing for this tournament, I’ve got a TV license so I can watch the games on my laptop!), I remember actually seeing Maguire in an England game and I could not fathom why he got picked. So that injury kept him out is probably no bad thing. I do feel for Grealish but as he said, he wasn’t in good form. Do I think we’ll win the Euros. Probably not, England play a lot better than they did but they just aren’t convincing. The best teams, generally but not exclusively, have a flow that I’m not convinced England have managed for a good long time. However, I also have to concede that I’m English, I never think the team is good enough. I am considering
The period that almost killed me: ‘My mam was told, if you take her home, she won’t last the night’. This is horrendous, my bleeding is continuous but not heavy and I’m completely done with it. But what I notice is that until she said she wanted to have a baby, no-one wanted to help and I do wonder if this is why women going through peri-menopause and menopause have such a hard time accessing treatment because they aren’t having babies and therefore are viewed as surplus to requirements and somehow not deserving of treatment. It’s something I notice as I enter my ‘crone’ era…
So it seems we are to have a General Election on 4th July. Bonus points to the protesters, who realising he was calling an election, played ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ through Rishi Sunak’s speech! I picked the photo to highlight this post before the election was called but I stand by it.
Here’s to 6 weeks of chaos…
Jeremy Hunt and Mel Stride warn against benefits ‘lifestyle choice’ I spent a while living on benefits while unemployed and you have be in a bad way for it to be a lifestyle choice. I’ve talked about this before. I wasn’t ill, when I was unemployed, but it wasn’t a good time for my mental health either. When I was unemployed, I had help, from friends and family, both financial and emotionally (thanks Ma) and it still was awful. I do remember the advisor at the Job Centre, telling me I should look for work that paid less and I pointed out that I couldn’t afford that because I was entitled to no top ups and on £25k, I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent. What kind of alternatives are people facing where ‘choosing’ to be long term sick is preferable to work? Because my health has been pretty good over the last 6 years and I know what has made the difference. A work culture that appreciates my work and cares about my health, physical and mental. And demonstrates that by paying well and having decent benefits. This means I have money to afford my rent and the rest of my life, to save a bit. I have healthcare via work that can provide therapy, that pays 10% of my salary into a pension fund without the need for any contribution from me. All of this allows me to live and plan. It’s not much and it’s not rocket science. How bad does life have to be that benefits and vitriol from the overfed ministers of this government seem like a decent alternative. Jeremy Hunt and Mel Stride lack imagination and sympathy and are trying to disguise the government’s failure over more than a decade to do anything other than line their own pockets by scapegoating vunerable people. Don’t let them.
JCB built and supplied equipment to Russia months after saying exports had stopped. Does this surprise me, nope. Aren’t the owners of JCB the guys who hosted Boris Johnson’s last wedding? Maybe (as he’s such a supporter of Ukraine) he should have a word with them? Or maybe the Tories should send their donations back until JCB undergo an audit? I wouldn’t hold my breath…
On the Problem of Rooting for the Women to Fix This. One of the reasons I would like the abortion law in the UK to change is because to have an abortion here, you need the consent of two doctors. That’s pretty easy to get but it would be pretty easy to change. The US though, is on the way to Handmaid’s Tale territory, it’s frightening…
Super Gran actor Gudrun Ure dies aged 98. Read the books, watched the TV programme and now have theme tune (makes so much sense now I know that Billy Connolly wrote it) going through my head, ‘She’s a serious granny (supergran), a mysterious granny (supergran), ‘she does things that you never saw your granny do, is there nothing that she canae do’……..
Last week the compost arrived and I spent Monday afternoon working on the plot.
I’m not even halfway done but I planted new strawberries and topped up the planters, I also fed them. Other than watering and feeding them, that’s me done with strawberries for summer. If there are runners, I’ll pot them up but my plan is not buy anymore strawberry plants until 2026!
I also weeded, topped up and covered some of the empty beds at the front, there was some epic weeding and planting around the pavers that the blueberries and strawberries are on. My usual favourite herbs, lemon curd thyme and camomile lawn…
My plan is to extend the compost around the pavers out a bit and plant some flowers and other herb out there, but towards the back (by the mint bed and the rosemary) there a bed of ranunculus. I’m going to move that bed once they are done and make that a ‘perennial’ bed, I have a perennial kale coming and I’ll plant walking onions, the perennial leeks and whatever else I can think of over there too, if anyone has any suggestions! It’ll take a while to construct but it’s not like I don’t have lots of other things to sort out first…
This week is also the week that the tomatoes arrived. My plugs came from Brookside Nurseries and they look great but the stars of the plot are the plants that Sharon brought round on Saturday! Including some Black Russians. She’s my hero!
I’m back in London on Thursday and my plan is to spend some good time on the plot over Friday to Monday. The most important thing is plants in the ground. Tomatoes, courgettes, brassicas, aubergines and peppers. I have some winter squash that can go in too.
There’s a bunch of things that need sowing (more winter squash, cukes, kale and beetroot) so by the end of the weekend the plot should look very productive.
Other things to do are sort out the front and sides of the front of the plot and all the weeding, I also need to fix a raised bed. So there is plenty to do! My passion projects for the weekend are the flower beds, so we’ll see how it goes….
In the last week, the UK has just had summer! It’s been pretty warm and I have done absolutely nothing but work and sleep and feel tired.
This week, is my last week before a holiday, so it’s work packing, planting, and hauling compost which arrives tomorrow. On Wednesday, I’ve been strong armed (ok not strong armed, my boss asked me nicely!) to being part of the Quilter Quiz Team, team name to be determined!).
On Friday, we have the team volunteer day, a thirteen mile walk. I’m going to put the just giving link here, in case anyone is interested. Phil is the reason this month marks my 6 year work anniversary, it was his idea that I might do well in IA! He and Matt were good people and I know the people that knew them really well miss them. I’m still not sure I’ll make the entire 13 miles without my piriformis twanging but I’ll do my best.
There will be more allotment work on Saturday and then I’m headed north!
