Driving the Bus

Help with understanding and getting a better view of a problem often comes from the use of a metaphor, story, rhyme or phrase.

So here's a metaphor for you.

You are driving a bus and it is full of rowdy passengers (your thoughts) who won't shut up and are all talking at once.  Not only are they criticising the way you are driving, they are also telling you where to drive to.  Does this mean you are incapable of driving the bus at all? No, because by keeping your eyes on the road you focus on the job in hand (driving the bus) and can block out the many conflicting instructions and criticisms thrown at you.

I often have a bus full of noisy passengers who have it in for me.  They all shout and try to undermine anything I am trying to do.

Sometimes the only way to deal with them is to drive into a garden and just get off the bus, sit down and rest awhile.

You find yourself becoming absorbed in the colour of a tulip with its impossible depths, textures and nuances.  Your eyes follow a bee going about it's business and soon you have melted into another place entirely, where all you have to do is look, and there is nothing shouting at you.

Dolls Minuet tulips, more than just crimson

 

Brunnera with wallflower

bee on Toadflax

first cut flowers of the season!

my new favourite, Flashing Spring Green

a tulip that thinks it's a peony

More soon....................................

Never mind being 'Mindful'...

the mission bells are ringing!

There are a gazillion things to do in the garden right now and that is too many (a million million I think, but I failed Maths).

I feel under pressure to do all the necessary things before spring becomes summer; then anything that isn't already in the ground won't grow and I will have missed the bus of the season.

I am intensely aware of time and have a longer list of 'to-dos' than usual and come what may I just have to keep up 'cos it's spring and all the flower bells are ringing! Throw off your duvet and get your hands in the earth, everything is turning and changing, time to shake off the winter and feel new - green, white or yellow, so long as it's fresh and bright and spring-like! Anything but blue, we've had enough of that.

I am supposed to be roused by the rallying call to go outside and do.

at the very least... 

    

The sap is rising, weeds are growing, blossom is blooming, slugs are foraging!  But I am rubbish when a million million things are shouting at me, easily overwhelmed and less able to mentally organise tasks.

I realised the other day how much growing is going on all around me.  The windowsills are full of seeds and seedlings at various stages of life, my mini greenhouse is the same, crammed with pots of dahlias and tender young plants.  I have my own private nursery going on here...how did that happen?  The yard is strewn with cuttings, divided perennials, summer bulbs, garlic, herbs, roses and soft fruit.  Enough to confuse and annoy the cat.

Some of it waiting for beds to be built or dug over at the allotment but most waiting for the last frosts to bugger off over the horizon.

no room in the shed even!

I am so out of step with the rhythm of things I keep tripping up, knowing what I should do but struggling to do it. Still running to catch up despite the fact that the cold spell at the start of the year delayed spring for a few weeks.  This should have meant time to breathe, not panic.

Gardening is many things.  Means different things to different people.  For me, regular and direct engagement with the natural world is a private act of hope - possibly faith even.

As someone famous once said

"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow."

If gardening is the one thing I can do I'm not doing it very well at the moment. I am lost in too many options, too many plants, possibilities, and an infinite number of angles to view it all from.

The garden in my head just keeps expanding. There are too many leaky holes in my brain and not enough weight to my thoughts to make them viable.

When everything shouts at me for immediate attention I freeze like a rabbit in headlights.

I will go back to  'The Art of Mindful Gardening', maybe Ark Redwood can shed some light, hold my hand and steer me through?

Current interesting books...  

It might not help that I lose myself in books about plants so much, no matter, these are all good.  In my humble opinion.

'My Cool Allotment' by Lia Leendertz, an inspirational guide to stylish allotments and community gardens

'The Wildlife Gardener' by Kate Bradbury (ex Gardeners' World writer)

'The Rurbanite' by Alex Mitchell

the 'Ten-Minute Gardener's' series by Val Bourne, one on fruit, veg and flowers - all excellent

'Cynthia' a species tulip in my garden

the lovely Fuji cherry in blossom

A Harvington Hellebore

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Over here from over there... 

Here's how it is.  I want to go out but my stomach wants to turn inside out at the thought. Don't tell me the time and don't tell me what to do, I hate that!  Oh God, I have to put my boots on now or we'll be late and I am  shaking.  I am telling myself over and over that this night will not happen again. I have got to do it.

I pretend to feel ok in the car, despite the fact that my safe place is getting further and further away.  There will be people, lots of them (read 'too many') and it will be hard.  Outside is toxic, it makes me feel sick.

But she has come all this way to take her sister to Howarth; to walk the moors, see where the Brontes' lived and breathed and her sister is so excited it makes her happy and just glad to be here.

'Here' is a small northern town a long, long way from New York.

When she comes on stage there's a massive wave of noise and applause that goes on and on and we are all behind it.  There's some impressive whistling, the kind I can't do (but know a girl who can).

When she talks and sings I can't believe I'm really hearing that voice, that she's here and I am looking right at her!  But it is real and she is the one reason I am here.

She is here for one night only, all the way from the USA, large as life and for real - Patti Smith! Yes, really.

The air is full of the presence of all those other people she seems to bring with her - Fred 'Sonic' Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Shephard, Warhol, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrisson, William Burroughs and the Chelsea Hotel...

She sounded so good - full of humour, intelligence and power.

When introducing a song inspired by William Blake she talked about him being a visionary, activist, poet, great printer, artist, writer and philosopher and ended by saying that when he died, he had a very humble funeral.

Ah Patti, how we loved you.

Patti Smith with Lou Reed

Patti & Robert Mapplethorpe

Patti in Paris, 1969

"And if there's one thing I could do for you, you'd be a wing in heaven blue"

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Sheds&Muck&Rabbit Holes...

I had two very blustery afternoons on my allotment plot last week, before the temperature tumbled and the snow arrived.

I didn't see a soul while I was there, probably a good thing since I had a stupid amount of kirbigrips keeping hair out of my eyes and too many coats.

I have inherited a leaning shed, which the owners wanted to take with them but decided it was too rotten to move.  It does look like it would fall like a pack of brittle cards if anything other than a wren landed on it.

I have already spent too much time ruminating over this shed.  I think I've made a decision then realise I haven't then all my thoughts go round again.

What to do?

It has certainly been a long time since the shed had any TLC. The wood hasn't seen linseed oil in a while and is dry as a bone, kind of bleached and battered too.

But it's crooked, and I like crooked.  My instinct is to let it stay and grow blackberries and honeysuckles all over it.  A pragmatic person would surely drop it and salvage the wood, upcycle it into raised beds, cold frames, trellises and fences.  It would be a no-brainer for the creative ninja-gardening powers of, say, Alys Fowler, she is very handy with a hammer and drill etc.  This is the woman who grew an enormous houseplant from an avocado seed and used old wine crates and olive oil tins as containers.  Before everyone else joined in. 

Alys, garden guru

   

Ah Alys, you make it look so easy!

This is not a shed I can use to brew tea in a moment of need, shelter from a sudden downpour with the radio for company, or do any useful gardening-type thing inside at all -  but the outside has potential.

I will have to sleep on it, leave it for the worry dolls.

Not quite so bad, but I have spent a lot of hours cutting and raking and wishing I had some machinery (or a goat) until I amassed two great piles of stuff to burn - and I love a fire.  Sniggling used to be one of my favourite things.

It's still not done, but while tackling the overgrown nameless tangle of dead and dried up plant 'stuff' I found the following...

* a pea-green piece of wood with '10' painted on it

* a little purple plastic spade

* half a red plastic bucket

* many sweetie wrappers

* broken pots and wire

* lots of pieces of carpet

* dried up sweetcorn and parsnips

* large stones

* a crown of rhubarb - alive!

* strawberries - ditto!

* raspberry canes

* leeks growing, but nibbled by rabbits 

Ah, them rabbits.

Now, I don't want to come over all Mr McGregor but I have to take action against the bunnies (in a humane way).  There are lots of bunnies, and they're pretty big, and they breed like...as you know.

 

 

The RHS have a list of plants that they reckon are 'relatively resistant to rabbits'.  Spot the keyword there.  They suggest  planting bergamot, marigolds, hydrangeas, onions, and garlic to name a few.  Next they inform me that rabbits won't eat lobelia or echinacea (just not as many as other plants),and that snowdrops are toxic to bunnies (!) Who knew?  Have I found my silver bullet?

gulp...!

 

Yeah bunny, be afraid. I read on and discover that our furry friends don't like seeing their reflections; so Cd's, water in glass jars, foil things etc might just put them off for a while at least.

Leaving bits of hose about the garden to mimic snakes (a rabbit predator) is another option.  Or a fake dog, eagle or owl.  Perhaps I could whittle a massive bird of prey out of the shed?

I soon see there's a lot more to this than slinging slugs over the fence from a trowel and wonder - what would Alys do?

I am a bit comforted to find that dahlias (all hail) are on the 'relatively resistant' list, which can only be a good thing, because if the bunnies eat my dahlias then my plot might start to resemble something out of 'Tenko' and I could develop a twitch, like the late Herbert Lom in the Pink Panther films.  That's an awful image to leave you with folks - sorry!

Here's more Alys...

that's much better :)

 

 

 

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Now bring me that horizon!

For the past few weeks I have mostly been glued to seed catalogues

and gardening magazines, to such an extent that I have enough paper material to fashion myself a large overcoat!

Needless to say, there has been much mental gardening; list making,planning,summer bulb choosing(dahlias mostly),green manure considering.  Wildflower seeds, native grasses,climbers and hedging, rambling roses, pumpkins and rabbit deterrents.  To be honest it's exhausting, since I can't find my 'off' switch.

Vintage seed packets

It's the type of gardening you can do when it is too cold and the ground too hard to get out and do actual gardening. 

Normal behaviour for the time of year, but cranked up to eleven owing to the fact that the Greygirl garden is expanding! (I nearly wrote 'growing' but that would have been cheesy). 

More space equals more planting possibilities - not to mention more dahlias!

From this weekend I will be taking my wellies and wheelbarrow to a plot on the local allotment and start digging.  I know that there's a lot of work to be done before any planting can happen, and the soil needs to warm up a fair bit too.  I read this week that you shouldn't plant anything until you are happy to put your bare bum on the soil. Perhaps 'happy' isn't the right word but you get the meaning. Not the kind of behaviour that would go down well on the allotment, I'm pretty sure.

Suffice to say there is much coffee to be drunk from flasks, fingerless gloves to be knitted and thoughts to be mulled over etc, you can't rush a good thing.

 Luckily for me though, my lovely brother recently gave me a woolly hat :D

I have to put the brakes on from time to time because it's easy to become overwhelmed and then my head will melt.

At times I feel like a bear with a very small brain, one that only has the power equivalent to a 40watt light bulb (that's in old money - new light bulbs aren't like the old ones at all, but that's another bucket of fish).

must get me some of these pants & a pipe!

Whenever I go anywhere now I can't help scanning for useful bits of wood.  I walk ever-hopeful towards skips but they always seem to be full of plasterboard and mould.  Or plastic things.

I would like to build a cold frame for my plot and find some pallets to make a compost bin out of and who knows, attempt some kind of shed!  Old window frames, posts and planks of wood are my idea of treasure right now.

I'll let you know how it goes...

hmmm...

a shed of doors - brilliant!

a two storey shed

cute shed

The good news is that my sets of onions and shallots are planted and I have potted up more garlic.  The cloves I planted in Autumn have plenty of leaves and are looking good :)

All my container plants have been top dressed and mulched.  Shrubs and roses pruned, fruit bushes trimmed.

Jiffy envelopes stuffed with seeds are arriving through the post.  There are so many possibilities and potential plants it's mind-boggling.

Fetch me wellies, I'm off...!

Feeling the chill...or sensing the green?

February can seem a bit slow.  Just more of the same wet blustery days under grey skies. The tail-end of winter can bite.  It can even snow, then the tabloids shout "48 HOURS OF SNOW HELL TO COME!" at us, and measure the horror in centimetres.  The weather forecast is full of colour coded warning triangles. It's a mini apocalypse in a tea cup.

We all know (don't we?) that the media love to exaggerate and worry us.  This  reaction to winter weather makes me feel sad and old.

What's not to like about being snowed in and having a day off? No cars on the road means you can slide and skid on them instead of the pavement, get the sledge out, burn your hands making snowballs and jump around in virgin snow.  Discover the true meaning of 'cold'.

In short - normal life gets hijacked and everything becomes magical for a while.  It all looks and sounds so different.   

white out

But on the bright side...

In February the good people of Amsterdam can skate on the semi-circular canals when traditionally the water ices over for weeks.  It's a thing to look forward to.

The Chinese new year starts in February, and most gardeners can almost smell spring green around the corner, what with winter aconites, snowdrops and witch hazels all flowering.

The days are slowly lengthening.

winter aconite & snowdrops

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Remembering Sylvia...

 

Sylvia Plath 1932 - 1963

The winter of 1963 was especially grim and February was freezing cold.  There wasn't much warmth in Sylvia Plath's flat on Fitzroy Road in London - where the poet WB Yeats had lived years before. Her two young children had both been ill and so was she.  Desperately so.

Fifty years ago today, on the 11th February, Plath killed herself at her home just weeks after her first and only novel 'The Bell Jar' was published.  She was thirty.

her book's first publication

Plath insisted on a pseudonym for her novel, having vowed never to publish it under her own name while her mother was still alive.

At the age of eight, when she was told that her father had died, Plath responded, "I will never speak to God again."

Sylvia Plath in West Yorkshire

Sylvia Plath is buried in the hilltop graveyard at Heptonstall, West Yorkshire.  On her headstone is a line from a WB Yeats poem;

"Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted."

Plath tattoo

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"Top Bombing!" 
or
The Joy of Yarnstorming
 

Technically, you probably can't yarn bomb your own garden - I don't know - it doesn't really matter 'cos who cares?

This year, instead of wrapping my blueberry plants in bubblewrap to protect them from frosts I used old yarns instead and it does look like the knitting fairy has been, which I quite like.

the Bay & Sweet Box get knitted

I do a lot of knitting and accumulate wool of varying colours and types, it feels good to turn random left-overs into crazy coloured pompoms, bunting, and scarves for plant pots.

Before I knew it, I was doing a spot of embellishing with buttons and crocheted flowers, even throwing in a bit of blanket stitch for good measure (my nights are long).  Where will it end? 

I do have my eye on the wider environment.  All Hail the guerrilla yarnstormers who add something colourful, cosy and comic to our drab urban spaces! Those great graffiti knitters embellishing a bench, giving a bobble hat to an overlooked frozen statue, a cloak to a queen, hanging intricate webs of crocheted wool in an underpass or leaving a trail of tiny knitted sheep around the capital.

You Go Girls!  They've got a bag of yarn and they're gonna use it.

a bombed bench

my blue woolly bunting

tree cosy

my Woollywall

hope she's amused...

London 'phonebox by Deadly Knitshade & the Yarn Corps

a red wool yarnstorm

on my doorstep

good idea..!

  

 info on Deadly Knitshade and her yarnstorming adventures at:

www.knitthecity.com

www.whodunnknit.com

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Last word...

The best thing about February (apart from Pancake Day) is that it's a short month, and all things must end.

Soon it will be March.  Your mind will turn to chocolate eggs, hot cross buns and simnel cake.

All will be yellow and green with bunnies and bows.  You'll be stressing (maybe) about what to give up for Lent. Don't say I didn't warn you!



Greygirl x 





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