As I write this we are in our third or fourth heatwave. It was 33c yesterday and every time I check the weather the days that are going to be above 25c stretch a bit further out.
So I’m back to daily watering and there is a lot more to water.
All of the plot is overgrown so I’m just doing was I can. Last week that was weeding at the back. I weeded, cardboarded and wood chipped the main path by the squash bed and around the raspberries and the bed next to it.
Some parts of the plot are tidy
I set up my lingonberry bed and I’ve also cleared the bed next to it and planted the leeks. The next thing to do is clear the paths around the next bed down and mulch and to clear the bed and plant the kale.
A fig tree and a lingonberry bed
I also planted up my birthday presents, a fig tree and a small bay tree.
Lettuce, chard and rocket have been planted in the square beds near the asparagus bed, the weeds are many but I’m just doing the best I can and tying not to get heatstroke!
Yep I need to do some weeding up by the asparagus too!
While the strawberries in the pots are really struggling, the ones in the ground are doing well and I’m taking the runners as another birthday present was a green stalk which I’m hoping will make watering them easier! I’ll set it up at the weekend and if it’s good, then guess what my Christmas present will be?
I have so much to do but full watering takes over an hour and right now I just do what I can.
The dahlias have started to flower, which pleases me.
2025 has been full of challenge. I’ve been doing more for Mum and while my definition and threshold of a messy house may not look messy to others, I feel like it need to get a grip on it because I’m uncomfortable.
I know what’s going on. When I feel emotionally rocky, I need to assert control over my surroundings and there’s a lot going on and winter is coming so for the rest of the month and most of September, I’m going to be working on my spaces and routine so that I can push through the next bit.
I’m pretty good at the small stuff in the flat, I wash up every night, I make my bed every day, the laundry is on a regular schedule, I clean my bathroom sink and toilet every night. I’m more or less tidy but there are a couple of things that I need to do more often because they are beginning to drive me insane. My things in the house are the floors (especially in the kitchen), hoovering and ironing. I actually do more of that for my mum than at my own house, which is ridiculous.
There are a couple of other things, so two new daily tasks need to be habit of sweeping or hoovering the kitchen floor every day after I’ve done the washing up. I really don’t understand how it gets so dusty but it really does and for the moment, I need to empty the food waste every day too because it’s warm and I hate fruit flies.
New weekly tasks also about floors, are hoovering and mopping the other rooms in the flat and getting to the ironing once a week instead of letting it build up and doing it when I have no more ironed clothes.
That’s the cleaning routine but I also need to have a declutter of the flat, because the flat feels more crowded than I am comfortable with, I’m just going to go through the cupboards in the house one at a time and hopefully by Christmas, it’ll feel better.
I just need to push through and pay attention at home for a couple of months and it’ll become second nature!
Heatwave Again. This is getting silly but it’s been really warm again we’ve been somewhere between 33C and 26C for the last week. According to the BBC we go back to a more workable temperatures this week. Thank goodness.
Bread. I’m not making bread every week at the moment, and the last couple of attempts have not been my best work. So I was relived on Friday to discover that I could still make a decent loaf of bread. This is the bread I make.
Baked and cooling
It’s August and sunset is currently 8.20pm. It’s time to remind myself and anyone else that suffers from SAD that it’s time to start Autumn/Winter prep. I have also written about this on and off (and will again in the next couple of weeks) I’m starting a bit earlier this year because life is…interesting at the moment.
There was drama this week with the downstairs neighbours who I thought were on holiday but only one of them was and the other seemed to be missing and there was a leak. It was a very intense 2 hours where I spoke to the police I have officially entered the age where policemen and women look really young!), the downstairs neighbours estate agent, the downstairs neighbours landlord who used to live downstairs and my landlord. That day, I also spoke to my brother about mum and mum about her next appointment with the doctor to discuss her MRI results. It was a very emotional day.
Finally, this week I’ve also reached the age where drinking a bottle of wine over the course of 5 hours and dinner leaves me hungover. It’s worth pointing out that this year I’ve drunk a lot less. But my tolerance to alcohol is shot to pieces…
My plans for this week involve working for 3 and half days this week, seeing Jo for belated birthday (hers and mine!), taking Ma out for another appointment where we hopefully will get an idea of what’s happening with her brain, and trying to work on the plot and keep the house tidy!
I had a birthday, it was quiet and I had to make my birthday cake (nothing new there!) it was the birthday custard sponge from Feast by Nigella Lawson (here’s the recipe in the Guardian), instead of her filling suggestion mine had cream and blackcurrant jam.
2. I grew a dahlia. This was a bit of a longshot, I planted these bulbs in June and hoped and here I am with a dahlia
3. I left some courgettes too late, witness the literal fruit of my neglect
4. Birthday plants. A new orchid and a fig tree
Fig treeThe orchid
5. Mum. Ma was supposed to have an appointment with the neurologist at Kingston Hospital this week – 13 weeks after the initial referral, but they cancelled and rearranged for October! So Ma decided to find out how much it would cost to go private, the appointment was last week and it was the most informative 40 minutes we’ve had with regards to her health, suffice to say it’s not just old age and the MRI we wanted her to have in 2024 would have confirmed that. We’re going for the MRI today to confirm a diagnosis. This week I’ve heard so many people talk about the NHS and how great it is but it’s not been great with Ma over the last year and while I’m happy to get answers, what Mum didn’t have the money to do this bit privately? I’m so bloody cross because no-one deserves the complete lack of curiosity and concern about someone falling over at least once a week, I sort of feel like they wouldn’t have taken her seriously until she broke something and ended up in hospital. It’s appalling.
July has been a busy month and up until last week, I felt like I’d been running around in circles, to very little effect. Last week, something clicked, and I started to achieve things. This often happens to me, I spend hours and days and weeks trying to get something done and it doesn’t get done but it seems that my brain has been running in the background and suddenly, I have a solution or the motivation and it’s done. I was apologising to a colleague for taking a month and a half to work something out and she pointed out that a month and a half wasn’t that long for this particular task. Which was a bit of a revelation, I’ve been beating myself up this year about not being able to adjust to big changes, but it’s actually not been that long!
All my focus was on getting my work and home to do list down so that I could spend a big chunk of the weekend, getting on with the to do list on the plot. I largely succeeded in the getting things done at home and work but failed with the plot due to a Sunday migraine. The curse of adulthood is that it’s Monday today and the week and the work reset. I have to do it again this week!
The rest of the week/weekend was disturbingly dull, on Saturday, Ma and I had haircuts, I did my usual cleaning routine at Ma’s. She says it’s a good job we actually like each other as we navigate this mother/daughter/carer relationship, I’m in awe of how gracefully she’s handling these really big (and scary) life changes. I’m constantly changing bits of her flat so they work better for me, I don’t just randomly change things, but if it’s something I need to get into often and Ma doesn’t, I’m re-arranging it!
Much easier to find stuff now!
Last week, it was her linen cupboard, so everything was folded properly and I could find things, Ma’s very sore hands mean that she struggles with folding things (although it’s never been her forte – it’s much more my thing) and has adopted the ‘shove it in the cupboard method’ much to my horror and also I was just done with sheets and duvet covers falling on me every time I tried to get a new one out, so I refolded everything so it was easier to find everything without flying pillowcases! I also tidied up one of her kitchen cupboards to prevent an avalanche of plastic boxes falling on my head!
This week is my last week in the office before I have a week off and August brings some changes to my work and home routine. In order to facilitate Mum attending a fitness class (as recommended by the doctor) on Monday mornings, I’ll be swapping my weekend day with Ma from Saturday to Sunday and stay overnight with her. On Monday’s, I can check in with work early, take Mum to the class and then work from home on Monday afternoon/evening. I’m so grateful that I work for a company that will allow me to be flexible in my work as I support Mum and I hope that it helps her because I do feel rather as if we are floundering around in the dark with things that will help (in part because it’s taking so damn long to get anyone in the NHS to investigate what’s wrong!). That will also change my weeknight visit to Mum from Wednesday to Thursday so we’ll see how it goes, I think it’ll be nice to have my Saturdays back and have a slightly less rushed time with Mum on Sunday nights.
Work wise this is a busy week, it’s a reporting week, with new reporting rationale (I really do know how to pile the pressure on myself!) and I have some preparation for two new starters and the usual get everything set up so I can go away without everything burning down but I have dinner at Sue and Richard’s on Friday and then hopefully a week to rest a bit and work on the plot and catch my breath. I would really like this to be a week where Ma doesn’t need surgery or hurt herself as has happened the last two years, so please send us some good thoughts.
Happy Friday! The 2020’s are not doing well for optimism about the state or the future of the world! I do kind of feel that there is no good news and I’m more than a little worried about what our leaders aren’t doing…which is a long winded way of saying that the links at the top of this are to be skipped if you can’t bear the news right now, just start after the picture of the dahlia and I will perfectly understand!
Who will pay for the failure of water bosses? Everyone but them. 16 years ago my water bill was £240-ish (£23.80 a month for 10 months), this year it £540-ish a year. With it due to rise 20% next year and the year after. Thames Water has been used by it’s various owners as a cash cow and now it’s paying its senior management retainers to get around a law prohibiting excessive bonuses. By any measure its a failing business and privatisation of a monopoly was never a good idea. As I have to pay higher prices for an essential service and I have no choice over who I can buy my water services from, then I would prefer that it was just nationalised.
James Cleverly to return as shadow housing secretary in Tory reshuffle. Two things. First, you have got to be in a whole heap of trouble if Jimmy Dimly is an answer to your issues, second, while I have been banging on about housing for years, it’s not exactly a prominent front bench position, she’s got Jenrick at Justice and Dimly at Housing – it doesn’t ring true of a leader with no fears of competition does it?
Starmer under pressure from cabinet to recognise Palestinian statehood. I can’t tell citizens of other countries what to do (or actually even other people in my country) but I’m sick and tired of my government sitting on the fence on this one. We need to recognise Palestinian statehood and stop supplying arms to Israel. I know why we aren’t but sometimes you have to face down your ‘friends’ when they are supporting bullies…
The secrets of self-optimisers: why ‘microefficiencies’ are on the rise. I don’t know if it’s a microefficiency but I have one of those detergent filled scrubbers in the bathroom and I use it on the tiles in the shower after I shower and then use the window vac on them. I also use it every night on the sink after I’ve brushed my teeth, so now the bathroom is more or less, always clean.
I am literally writing this on the bus on the way home from my Mum’s. Last week, I took her to the doctors and we get x-rays of her hands and this week it was for a blood test because the doctor thinks the issues with her hands could be rheumatoid arthritis. Her hands are very sore and as she tells me often, hurt a lot!
The neurology appointment we had for August has been cancelled and rebooked for October. Mum has decided to go private because the frequency of her falling has increased to about once a week. She is covered in bruises and honestly I’m worried about her all the time! Yesterday we spent some time in Sally’s lovely garden and last night I sorted out Mum’s kitchen. It was driving me up the wall (yes I know that I’m not the tidiest person in the world but things were all over the place at Mum’s and as she has bought a new air fryer so she doesn’t need to use the oven (which is really low down!) I had a reason to tidy up and re-arrange a bit!
Much better
Other than care of the aged p, I’ve been busy at work and in the heat. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been to Hampton Court Flower Show, been at the plot for the Open Day, had some of the godchildren needing company, been at the Ealing Beer Festival and yesterday Ma and I were at Sally’s.
Work wise, I’ve had a quarterly reporting period, a team training day (because are you really working if you don’t also have to get up at 5am to be in the Southampton office at 8:30am? While I’m doing g those things my normal day to day doesn’t stop. I’m really lucky that I work hybrid but I need to be in the office a bit more and the more I’m in the more people remember to ask me for things and office days also involved three hours when I could be working!
Allotment open day, it was raining for a bit
This is life and I’m ok with it but it has just been full on, nearly a year after Mum’s fall, I’m still not sure I’ve fully adjusted to the change. I know that I’m not the only person in the world right now feeling that I have a lot to do and not a lot of bandwidth (emotional or physical) to do it with and I’m also aware that I don’t have as much to do as others. It’s still hard to work through it though!
View from the bus
I had a migraine on Saturday. I’ve been pretty migrainey all this week, which I put down to the change of HRT and I’ve also been great this week at ploughing through on pills and Purdeys (the headache cure of champions!) but I think over the weekend, I just hit my limit and it was a doozy.
This week is not as busy, I’m not doing anything apart from work, home, allotment and Mum! However, I’m not having any sort of social engagement, the last couple of weeks have been too people-y for me and I need some mental rest!
Beer
I’m in the office tomorrow and Wednesday. This week is action week for The Quilter Foundation and there is a ‘village fete’ tomorrow, I have no idea how it’s going to work but I’ve volunteered to help so we’ll see how it goes!
Mum’s and a trip to the Surbiton Farmers Market on Saturday and allotment on Sunday. Have a good week!
On Friday, Sue and I went to the RHS Garden Festival at Hampton Court.
I had never been before so didn’t really know what to expect.
It was clear that the really warm weather earlier in the week had been an issue for some of the gardens.
The Herbal Fortress
I loved the smaller gardens, especially the ‘For the Love of Lamiaceae’ gardens
The Sundowner Garden
Audible had The Alan Partridge Sound Bath Garden, which managed to be pretty and funny.
There was lot to see but I would have preferred more gardens closer together. I know the RHS is in a funding crisis at the moment but I felt there was too much non garden/plant related selling and not enough places to sit!
PicnicCar park gardenThe QVC garden
The plant and flower tent, where the buying of plants happened was really lovely. Having a chance to talk to the growers and see some really impressive displays was great. I bought 10 plants and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t buy more but I have a plan for the ones I bought and although I have some ideas I need to work on them a bit before I commit buying more plants!
My little plant haulDahlia ‘Elmo’The long water
Overall, I would go again but probably on a late entrance ticket and largely for the opportunity to buy some plants!
2pm in the polytunnel, when it had been open since 6:30am
So the key job last week was getting them in the ground.
However, I live in London which for the last few days has been in a heatwave. If you don’t live here, I promise that you don’t understand how hellish London is when the temperature goes above 25c. I know if you live in a place where the weather is much more extreme and 25c is a mild and sunny, you’ll think we’re all a bunch of wusses and so be it. Other people have worse weather (a lot of mainland Europe is having unbearable heat too!), I wouldn’t want to be there either but the last week in London has been difficult and we are just not built for it.
So difficult, that watering aside, I didn’t do much work over the weekend. What I have been doing is morning and evening visits.
First in the ground were the winter squash plants. I re-ordered after the first lot died. I’d ordered a bunch. Three each of musquee de Provence, Waltham butternut, Uchiki Kuri, Sweet Dumpling, Buttercup and Trobonchino. Most of them were planted in the squash bed and two in amongst the sweetcorn because if I’m going to disobey planting instructions, I’m ready going to disobey planting instructions!
Squash bed
So far I’ve lost two, I think due to foxes or birds digging in the bed! Which isn’t terrible, I would really like an abundance of squash this year, I missed not having them this winter
So I have friends who are even more uncontrollable in the face of a plant sale and went wild over the last couple of weeks and this is a long way of saying I was given some extra plants! I needed to accommodate them. Six tomato plants (appleberry red, yellow and orange, akoya) , three sweet peppers (Shadow and Lila purple), three padron peppers and two chillies (Santa Fe Grande). The padrons and the sweet peppers went into the polytunnel with the nine snack peppers already in there.
Tomatoes have not traditionally done very well for me in the polytunnel. And I didn’t want the chilli peppers in the same place as them. So I needed to find some space where I had none. So I made a bed!
New bed
I also tied up and trimmed the existing tomatoes, harvested the first potatoes and courgettes, picked fruit, weeded the beds and potted on the basil, nine star broccoli, cottagers kale and physalis.
A strong start for the courgettes!Potted on
I’ve not done nearly as much as I hoped and im pretty much done for progress for this week, I’m in Southampton today, the office tomorrow, Hampton Court Flower Show on Friday and Sunday is the allotment open day. I am off on Monday so I’ll be working then (at the moment, the BBC is predicting a dull 23c day so I might be able to work without dying of heatstroke!) however I’m just going to carry on doing what I can in the hope that I can made some real progress in August.
Nic Dempsey 