I’ve always had plants in this flat. The rule is that they have to be okay with some slight neglect because I’m terrible at remembering to water them.
When Tina and Charles left St Leonards Road I was ‘gifted’ some plants, a lemon scented pelargonium, a couple of begonias and they survived, In fact the pelargonium has spawned many offspring, and I currently have another one in the living room.
I still have the plant but the kitchen looks completely different!
I acquired a spider plant, I now have two (they have also spawned many babies)
Spider plant
Then came the orchids. I currently have three.
Current living room plants, this photo was taken before I got the second lemon tree!
There is a small collection of succulents too!
Finally, the new addition is the lemon tree. Which takes a lot more care than the others.
The only real problem is light, I live in a flat with no windowsills (the bathroom does and the kitchen has a counter but plants need light and while I do have a grow light set up for the allotment having that up all year round would drive me crazy.
So I need to stop adding plants, before it gets out of control!
My autumn/winter project is coming along, that’s 25% sewn.
Intellectually, I know I live in a city with decent, comprehensive public transportation. This Friday, I needed to get a train from Mum’s house to Fulham for 8:45am. Signal failure says no. I rebooked the appointment and decided to get the bus home, knowing I wouldn’t be at my desk at 9am but ok. A bus driver decided he didn’t want to stop (his bus was not full) and so my two hour journey took longer. What I’m saying that while I know I live in city with ‘good’ public transport, public transport in London doesn’t feel comprehensive, cheap or convenient. I dream about learning to drive. (Everyone from other parts of the country must see this as me complaining about my diamond shoes being too tight!)
Mum heard my hint and I have another lemon tree as an extremely early Christmas present.
I’m really tired at the moment, it’s autumn. The darkness screws with my happiness and my ability to fall asleep and stay asleep! I know people with SAD are supposed to sleep more and probably if I could do anything I liked. I’d sleep until about 9am and take an afternoon nap. I’d sleep more over 24 hours. However having to put all my sleep into 8 hours a night doesn’t at all work for me in autumn/winter and I’m so tired
This does not in any way convey the actual joy and comfort of my bed!
The work volunteer day is this week. While I will have to do a lot of running around. It’s a day in a garden (@ropewalkcommunitygarden) so while it’s not my garden, it’s still a day in the garden, which can’t be bad
I hate all housework that has to do with cleaning floors. I loathe it, I can explain how poorly my mum is at the moment by explaining to friends that I’m hoovering and mopping the floors in her flat.
In action
I just hate it. So why did I buy a new hoover this year?
Because it makes it easier and quicker to hoover the floors and so I do it more. I can now hoover all the floors and the stairs and then mop the floors with the mop attachment in about 30 minutes and I don’t have to deal with plugs and leads. In fact, I think it’s using the cord free shark at Mum’s that lead to my need for a cordless hoover!
I’m not an expert on hoovers but this one does the job without costing a fortune.
So if you hate hoovering with a burning passion, then I would recommend this hoover!
How elder care can rupture sibling relationships: ‘I didn’t have much choice’ It’s tricky and Ben and I have had our moments, at base though, Ben and I are quite similar and we have talked more in the last couple of months about how we’re going to handle it and we do agree on the important things. We are also helped by Mum being very clear about what will happen and how she wants me to handle it, she’s made it really clear to Ben so we are all on the same page about how we will handle most things. I think it’s really important to remember that we are both struggling and doing the best we can.
‘I carved until my fingers bled’: inside the baffling world of pumpkin obsessives I love winter squash and this time of year (and especially this year with my complete winter squash growing failure!) I tend to buy some and turn them into puree which I use for pancakes, cake, and savoury things. But never pumpkin pie which I’m not keen on at all!
Tuesdays and Fridays are difficult days in my week as they are my swap over days, on Tuesdays I go to the office from my flat and go ‘home’ to my mum’s flat. On Friday’s, I go home because while I love hanging out with my mum, I draw the line at sleeping on an inflatable mattress /floor more days of the week than I sleep in my bed! However, one of the themes of this blog has been how much I struggle with transition, on Tuesdays, I don’t want to leave my flat and on Fridays I don’t want to leave my mum, even though I go back to see her for the day on Saturday and Ben comes to see her on Sunday, while I know I’m not abandoning her, I feel like I am!
Friends have expressed concern about me, about my self-care and resilience and other people have said it’s too much to do. I don’t believe it’s too much for me to do for my mum, other people have other circumstances, responsibilities, and priorities. What I’m doing is not a criticism of what they are able to do for their parents. However, I’ve been saying that the routine needed to bed in, and I needed to get into ‘harness and it would be fine, also I have a friend whose husband had a stroke last year and a boss who has a child who has significant needs. I feel they have a more difficult road to walk than the one I’m on, all I’m really doing right now is hanging out with my mum.
However over the last couple of weeks, I’ve started to feel that I’m settling in. Not gonna lie, for most of September, I was fried. I managed to do everything that I needed to do for Mum but my flat and my life was feeling a bit more chaotic that I was comfortable with, I guess I was also coming to terms with her diagnosis. PSP is a nasty and rare disease (I’d never heard of it before Mum got it and the neurologist at the NHS hospital has only seen one other person with it). Knowing that your beloved parent has a disease that won’t only kill her but rob her and us of herself, honestly, it sucks. In a way, that it’s a fast disease is it’s only blessing, Alzheimer’s and dementia can take decades.
I’ve also been dealing with a sense of failure, that I should have seen that it was more than her balance, looking back I can see that this has been going on longer than a year, the decline has been quicker since her concussion last year but I can see now that there were other changes but I just didn’t know to look for.
All that to say I’ve been doing a lot of emotional processing, which combined with a lot of change to routine, was causing me to be frozen at home. I was doing the bare minimum to get by, and it was showing in the state of the flat (I’m pretty sure that at the beginning of the month, I did the same load of washing about 5 times because I kept forgetting about it). I know it was bad because I read one book from the end of August to last week! I don’t love not being in control and honestly, it was hard for me to cope with all the change, autumn and all the things that Mum needed. After the first week, I realised that what we needed were blocks of time with minimal back and forth. Originally, I was going to go home on Wednesday night and visit on Thursday and then Saturday. That really doesn’t work, now I go Tuesdays and stay until Friday morning (if I’m going for a walk with Sue) or Friday afternoon/evening if not. I come back on Saturday to do shower, housework, shopping, food prep and hang out.
And I still have my moments, especially when I’m tired. Last week was not good. The thing about resilience and self-care is that they are interconnected. They are both like muscles you have to strengthen and stretch them and they work with each other. I believe that in order not to burn out it’s important to notice what helps and doesn’t and to give yourself some grace. These are all things, I’ve done over the last three decades or so (sometimes not as well as I’d like!) and I’ve realised that I’ve been putting them into practice this month without really thinking about it but I have noticed it showing up.
To show you how that works in my like I want to take you through last week when I noticed the pattern. I had to be in the office Monday and Tuesday. We had a new starter on Monday, I woke up feeling dreadful, I’d was migraine-y, which is defined as an upset stomach and a banging head, which could get better or worse, following a dreadful night’s sleep. I got up, took some paracetamol, my vitamins and ACV (self-care) and got myself to work, I got into the office early (resilience) but I did not have lunch or breakfast with me, I decided that if I felt bad at lunchtime I could go home (grace). I didn’t feel fantastic at lunch but after a short walk, I decided I wasn’t sick enough to go home and as I was in the middle of a piece of work, and I made a call to just get it done (resilience). However, I left the office at 5.05pm and was home by 6:30pm (self-care). I came home, and I decided that laundry left from the weekend, wasn’t going to get done (grace) but that I would take everything on the airer down and put it away (resilience). I did not feel well enough to eat but I tidied the kitchen and sorted out what I was taking to Mum’s the next day. (resilience). There was even some light hoovering, I had a bath and went to bed (self-care).
The next morning (after 7hr47m sleep – yay for self-care!), I got up and made my bed, packed for mum’s, got ready for work and managed to take the recycling and food waste out (resilience) because Tuesdays are also bin days, I also managed to clean the bathroom sink and toilet and the house isn’t perfectly clean but it is clean enough and tidy, so that I won’t feel terrible when I get back on Friday (resilience and self-care). I was in the office about 15 minutes later than usual and again without breakfast or lunch but with coffee. So I skipped breakfast and bought lunch again. (grace). On Tuesdays, I get the train to Waterloo, I could walk it but it’s a 25-minute walk, with a rucksack and a suitcase along the South Bank with the tourists. I give myself the gift of not having to deal with that and get take the drain!
So gradually my grinding out the tasks is giving me some space for self-care which in turn is helping me get more resilient and being more resilient, I can see the change and give myself grace for what I’m not doing but instead of seeing it and berating myself for not doing those things, the noticing of them is helping me solve the issues.
I’m not sure that all makes sense but I’m more aware of how it all works together. Resilience doesn’t mean things are easy, self-care doesn’t mean doing what you want to do, grace isn’t about things being ok when they aren’t done. I’m trying to find a balance and it’s mostly working. In all of this, it seems ridiculous I can see how lucky I am. Mum is approaching this with such grace, (even knowing how I difficult this is going to be, I would still pick her, she’s the best parent anyone could hope for!), she raised me, I know I can do this. I’ve also been lucky to have the care and support of my friends and while it felt difficult at the beginning my brother is being fantastic, work are also being great. Truly, I’m very lucky, even as this is horrible.
And for anyone wondering, I’ve chosen to mostly illustrate this post with pictures of Mum, mostly of her from about 10-15 years ago, when she was absolutely herself. This is the Jillian, I wish everyone could know because she was a force of nature and I’m so lucky to have had that time with her!
I said that this week I would work on the paths. I did work on the paths.
I started with cutting back the lavender and then cleared the bed by the gooseberries and as I was there, weeded the path that runs the by the asparagus patch to the beds and back to the central path on the plot. Last year a stray strawberry runner planted itself and this year that plant had runners so there’s a little mini bed of strawberries!
Then I started on the sides of the beds that hadn’t been cleared. This is the before last week
And this is the after on Monday, the green you can see in the path is supposed to be there. It’s chamomile lawn, thyme and a couple of forget me nots I decided I would let live!
I also cut back and weeded the mint bath.
I weeded some of main path and wood chipped , so this is where we are with the path
I basically have to do two more side paths, between the strawberry bed and the bed with the nasturtium going wild and between that bed and the cabbage bed and the central path from the blackcurrants to the raspberries. Aka the worst bit. Both beds could also do with a tidy and then get planted up. It’s going to suck because it’s bad.
This isn’t even the worst path!
I did do some other stuff too. I planted half the onions in modules. They will live in the polytunnel until spring when I’ll have a think about where to plant them. (I’m going to put the others in the cabbage and kale bed either next week or the week after and I think the shallots and spring cabbage are going in the bed that the nasturtium is currently in! Finally the garlic, will go into the bed that had the sweetcorn in and currently has the squash in. But paths first!
I cut some flowers, harvested tomatoes, chard, lettuce and the world’s smallest cabbage.
The bucket of chard is back!
There is a lot to do. I need to weed and top up the blueberries and fruit trees and then to strulch them. The fruit cage area needs weeding and mulching and more plants in between the pavers.
Work required
The raspberry and blackcurrant beds need some attention and weeding and mulching. Plants need putting in the ground. There is all of the work I talked about last week. I need to sort out my much neglected compost pile and the shed and poly need tidying too. The front bed and the path by the rhubarb needs weeding again! And just look at the state of the leek bed!
Haven’t said that, things are doing great. The kale is in and growing, the chard is looking amazing!
I need to keep at it but I’m hopeful that I can break the back of the worse of the work before Christmas and be ready for spring.
I’m fascinated by other peoples booze collections and mine lives in three sections of the kallax in the kitchen. I’m always surprised by how many bottles there are (although mine is pretty modest by the standards of my friends) and I can always think of sprits that I don’t have and should probably buy!
I recently decided to dust the booze shelves and 46 bottles of spirits, given that I don’t drink that much anymore (not more than two drinks, not more than two nights in a row) and I’m just one person, that doesn’t work in the industry, isn’t an influencer or reviewer, seems a bit much..
It isn’t a very balanced collection, there is one bottle of rum and no vodka but 13 bottles of gin (not including the couple of non alcoholic gins) and 10 of whiskey. For anyone wondering, the bottles I always have in the how are campari, cointreau, aperol, Buffalo Trace (the house bourbon), Powers plain and rye (the house whiskeys), Sipsmith and Plymouth (house gin) and red and white vermouth that live in the fridge. So I’m always good for a manhattan, a martini and a negroni which are my three favourite cocktails.
If I had unlimited funds there would be more rye whiskey in my life but there are currently three bottles in the collection!
This week has been tough. It’s me, I’m the problem. I started the week feeling off and really tired and did not recover. Work was difficult. Do you ever start a piece of work that you just can’t finish for reasons entirely beyond your control that you feel you should have seen coming. That was me this week, reporting would not end. I did not enjoy it, I was not fun to be around. I’m going to say that I’m not good at perseverance when I find things hard so this was a good chance to build that behaviour…but I also need to apologise for my extreme grumpiness, I actually said the words “I’m not grumpy” to my brother and he did point out that I sounded like the nephews when they were little! It was true, my poor mum put up with me with a lot of patience (and some whiskey!)
This week someone sent Mum nice flowers not dead ones! Which made me happier.
Ben is 50 tomorrow, I made him a cake! (Who am I kidding? He brought Laura and the boys to see mum on Sunday, I made the boys a cake. I’ve long ago come to terms with my need to provide food for the people I love. (It’s in my genes, straight out of the Frank Hull playbook)
Not pretty but tasty!
This arrived this week, I am beyond excited.
While I have been doing Ma’s hair on a regular basis, I’m not good at it. My hair is like my mums and we both had curly hair when we were babies. So we tried curl mousse and not drying it and mum was not a fan. So I bought this for her and it’s amazing. It’s so good I was texting Jane about how good Ma looked and it’s been quite a while since either of us have had haircuts!
This summer has been warm and I’m a fat woman of a certain age, while I don’t suffer from hot flushes, I do run hot and I struggle once I’m warm to cool down especially on the bus. At some point it was inevitable, and I bought a mini fan. This one.
It has been the best thing I’ve purchased for the commute to the office and the bus journey to Mum’s, even though it’s October. The Guardian had a list of the best ones (here) and if like me you are hot all the time and not in a good way, you should get a mini fan.
As you look at it from the main path, the left side of the allotment is a bit neglected, this is the side that is home to the pond and ‘rose garden’, it looked like this in 2022
It does not look like that anymore. The plan for that side of the plot is still good, but from the rosemary up to the back of the plot its a mess, so much grass. The raspberries have invaded the little iris patch and one of the roses has gone insane. There is grass everywhere and it needs work.
We won’t talk about how I meant to get to it in summer, that didn’t happen. So it needs some attention, I’ve done a lot of work this year to give the plot more perennials (strawberries, dahlias, lingonberries, the asparagus patch) and some of that work will continue, I would like a perennial leek bed established but we’ll see if I can get to that! However, I think my plan for the left hand side of the plot will work, if I can get it sorted. Let me tell you about the plan.
First the iris patch. I need to dig it all out, weed the grass and the raspberries out and replant any of the remaining irises that have survived. I’ve also got a bunch of dutch iris bulbs to plant there and because I’d like to have some to cut for mum in the spring.
Iris patch in 2023
I also need to sort out the raspberries, get the tables down and generally tidy the main path there.
Then the roses and the lavender. cut things back, weed, mulch – you know the drill. I think I’m going to take up rose at the front of the bed by the alpine strawberries because as the photo shows, it’s overwhelming everything. I have loads of alliums to plant around the remaining roses, and I’d like another yellow rose because they are my favourite! I bought two climbing roses this year, and I need to plant them, I’m thinking that at one end of this area, I’ll put an arch in and let them climb up it. There is already lavender in the bed that I shall trim. I’ve taken cuttings lavender so if I need to replace any in the spring, I’ll have them. As I clear up towards the pond, I’ll see what has survived the grass. There was oregano, knautia, verbena, hyacinth, bluebells and various thymes.
May 2023
Above is what was intended to be the second bed for winter squash and it hasn’t been grown on since 2024 and it’s completely overgrown. This year I cut it all down and covered it. My plan is that this is going to be another fruit area. I have a bunch of trees in pots now and some more to come (when they all arrive, I’ll have 4 cherries, 3 apricots, 1 peach, 2 figs and what I think is pear tree.) I also have a bay tree two bitter oranges that are supposed to be hardy, I also have a lemon tree but that is not hardy so will be moved in and out of the house. Yes, yes I am a plant slut…
This year after I cut the grass down and covered the bed
My plan is that I’m going to take the bed out because it’s ropey (of course it is, I built it!), dig it over and bury the pots (all 10 of them), so the trees will be removable but look like they are in the ground, the hope is that burying them will keep the need to water them down and it’ll look good. I was also given some grape vines and I have two kiwi bushes, they’ll go into this area too. On the ground, I’ll plant herbs and flowers. In my head I’m calling this the ‘mini orchard’ which is pretentious but there you go.
May 2023
Then finally the back bed, which had a peony, lovage, lavender and two of the roses. Behind it is the boysenberry, which has more or less taken over and is invading the polytunnel!
So the plan is to cut the boysenberry right back, so that I can better control the regrowth. then to see what’s still alive in the front. I don’t have a planting plan for that so we’ll see.
This is the plan, I have to do as much of it as I can before the garden waste bin collection stops for the winter in the last week of November so seven Sundays. It’s big. And there is other work that needs doing, the polytunnel needs a new cover. Beds need to be cleared and sorted (I’m down to my last 4 bags of compost from the massive delivery in spring), there is always something to do so it’s going to be a busy winter!
Nic Dempsey 