Hollyhocks

It was Zeph’s parents evening tonight. It is ridiculous to still feel uncomfortable sitting outside a classroom at my age. It’s also really hard not to assume your children are like you. I mean – I know they are their own people – just some things strike such resonant chords with me that I instantly award him the rest of my remembered woes. Clearly not the case as he already has better social skills at eight than I do.

Never mind all that – my hollyhocks have finally unfurled;

 Ignore the rusty leaves. In fact this clump is so rusty that most of the leaves have fallen off and there are just spikes of promising buds. 

 Ignore the poor savaged conifer in the background, it was not me. It belongs to the ukrainian catholic church next door who are very tidy and lean on my fence and sigh at the weeds.

 These are the sherbert lemon ones. Not the best photo known to man but things conspire against me you know. I prefer the more open flower and so do the bees, this clump is covered in humming loveliness.

Also very rusty. Oh well. These two clumps are towering over my little garden and I love it. If you lie on the ground they soar up into the sky like church towers and you can hear the vibrating bees. So worth the enormous clumps of leaves which shelter masses of snails. I hanker after delphiniums as well but they never seem to survive my rapacious mollusc population whereas the spiky leaved hollyhocks do quite well. I never seem to succeed with seedlings – maybe I should beg a well established clump from someone instead.

I finish my flowery interlude with a shot of the last lily which is doing its wholehearted best to compensate for the other sad, lost, beetle-gobbled stumps.  

 The scent this sunny evening from just one bloom made me feel all giddy. You can’t ask more than that.

Homecoming Frog Princess

Oh I’m missing posting everyday.

I know it’s important to keep things in perspective but writing every day felt really good. I might start-up another internal resolution. Although I’m not bending on the to-do lists. Much better to just do something. For me anyway – the girl who devoted a day to the most complex multi layered revision schedule you could ever dream of then never wasted a second actually revising.

It’s been flying ant day here on the grey streets of Tredworth. We went swimming after school and ants got stuck to my wet hair on the way home. I tried to embrace the BT aspect of all living things blah blah blah. I just don’t like outsized ants in my hair. Sue me.

Zeph found it all very funny. He had a school trip today to Cotswold Farm Park and was full of chat about the animals he’d seen and got to hold. Bubbling over with excitement he showed us what he’d got in the gift shop. (The pinnacle of any eight yr olds outing.) Two snap band bracelets with little beanie animals on – one lizard and a frog one for Ida.

I was really touched that he’d thought of her (although he did point out he was the actual overall owner – even though Ida could wear it all the time – all about the rules kids…) She was ecstatic with joy. It took five full minutes of persuasion for me to get her to leave it in the locker while we swam.

“frogs doooo go in water mum.”

“not beanie ones.”

She’s wearing it now in bed. It’s a frog, it’s glittery green, you snap it onto your arm, if you put it on your head you can say you’re a frog princess like in Bagpuss, Zeph gave it to her. Things don’t get better than this.

Sometimes I feel so insubstantial in the world. When you watch someone you care about hurting and there’s nothing you can do or say to lessen the pain. Just wait by their side as they move through it. Today, watching my children, I felt like I’d helped build this happy joyousness. That I’d made room in the world for this love.

Felt pretty good. Ants or no ants.

June garden wandering

Once again my garden is being swallowed by the implacable advance of bindweed. This year I feel surprisingly relaxed about that. My gardening vigour moves in cycles. I have periods of vigilance and enthusiasm which wanes and then waxes. I’m moving up into a wax now but have still enjoyed the recent waning.

What slow meandering with cups of tea in the brief dry moments has revealed is how much small busy wildlife there is among the weeds. We are very abundant in small glistening beetles, wolf spiders hefting around their eggsacks, ladybirds, grasshoppers, leaf beetles pretending to be vogon spaceships, ants casting out new trails and milking the aphids on the tips of my tree branches. There are plenty of toads and slow worms avoiding the cat and sheltering under the piece of corrugated metal we found in a skip down the road and rescued for them. Snails, grey ones and the fancy yellow kind weave silvery trails and hang like baubles from their daytime resting places. There is a pearly white crab spider on the poppies by the swing, we tease it with a blade of grass and it rears up and waves its front legs menacingly. The only thing I actively crunch are the red lily beetles. They’ve decimated my lily clumps. I took this picture of my only lily buds (I had about thirty flowers last year…)

 Look, I’ve missed two in the photo I took. They are cocking a snook for sure. Beautifully scarlet – they don’t have any natural predators in the garden, except for me and my heartless crushing foot. As you can see I’m actually pretty slack in the slaughter…

This fabulously alien lurker is a very welcome ladybird larvae. The bindweed at the end of the garden is covered in them. Another reason to appreciate it.The fleeting field poppies arch between and over all the garden debris. Even though the petals are whisked quickly away the seed heads are things of sculptural beauty.  

As well as the poppy seed heads Ida and I admire the foxglove seed whorls. Their purple spikes are pretty much over but my hollyhock clumps are gathering themselves for blooming;

Marigolds are on the brink of opening up their burning orange petals;

My unpromising patch of lambs ear is surprisingly pretty when it flowers;

 I’m going to do a bit of bindweed unsmothering tomorrow and plant the rest of the pumpkin seedlings. If I have the will after early morning swimming with the kids I’m going to try sawing down the ash sucker sapling growing out of the side of the conservatory. I’m pretty sure it’s bad for the house… although I do like the leaves… after all weeds are just plants in the wrong place.

Flowery thoughts

Never mind green fingers – I am green with envy. My parents are, at this very moment, wandering around the Chelsea Flower show. I hope they’re having a great time. On Saturday, the last time I saw them, I kept interrupting the talk over our meal with blurted injunctions to make sure they look at things. Mostly in the show tents because I never see them on the TV coverage. They always swoop past the stands in a tantalizing fashion before focusing on Titchmarsh wittering on. Gah.

Steve is hoping my Dad may snap under the pressure of the crowds and go for him [A.T.] with a bamboo cane or whatever sharp object is to hand.

Does this mean I’m irredeemably middle-aged? Daydreaming about flower shows and banks of pristine alliums and sweet peas? (Not about Titchocide.) There’s something fascinating about all that strived for petal perfection. Balanced perfectly on the brink of something for a couple of days. The artifice of items, by definition, natural.

I like watching flowers decay. People may think my withered vases are down to being too lazy to sort them out but I genuinely enjoy the process.

Today I’ve been hovering around one of the foxglove clumps in the garden attempting to get a photograph of a bee. It wasn’t very successful but Z and I had a lovely time…

My poor little camera just isn’t up to the action. It’s just a point and click one but I’m sure if I was more patient I could get a better shot. Trouble is there’s so much good stuff to see.

The washing up bowl is teeming with life. There are, what we are reliably informed are, midge larvae squirming around in its clear water. The water mint has doubled in size and the thyme and salvia are covered in bees and hoverflies.

My lilies in their pot have burst triumphantly open;

and I love this dear little daisy, grown from a cutting from G’mas garden. She says it’s from a plant her mum grew from a cutting from her Grannie’s garden in Northumberland. This makes me happy. We’ve guarded it from slug attack by a bank of saved and baked eggshell. It seems to have worked. The unprotected lupin seedlings alongside it are goners.

Many, many beautiful things. I love them all. The kids shriek about collecting ants and dandelion heads. I wander in and out while cooking a roast chicken for dinner when Steve gets home. Our half term holiday starts this evening. While I wash up with Ida’s help I am relieved to feel the bluebird on my shoulder but am very careful not to look at it. In case I scare it away.

Garden treasure

 The woodlice have competition. Ida has discovered caterpillars.

Today we found this beauty:

He did tickle but Ida was perfectly still, careful and gentle with him. (Don’t know why we’re so sure it’s a he, but we are…)

After a  certain amount of googling I think it’s one of these;  The Lackey.

This is him returned to his leaf after I finally convinced Ida he did NOT want a sausage, icecream or a gherkin or a piece of cherry pie. Eric Carle you have much to answer for – all of it good    :)

I’ve done a certain amount of bindweed battling and we’ve dutifully peered at all the new flowers and righted a few overturned woodlice. My peonies are nearly over, a final bedraggled sepia-rose hue;

but more of the foxgloves are budding;

The rain hasn’t beaten them all down and the ground is gorgeously wet and soft and wormfilled. I’ve got another hazel sapling to transplant and a curry plant to put out. The beans getting leggy in the conservatory could do with being planted out as well.

Everything takes longer with an Ida helper but equally is rendered more interesting. I think maybe this is the key of managing long toddler days. I always felt I was missing this dreadfully when Z was in nursery and I was miserable at work. Now I have flashes of unbearable longing for work, lunch hours and autonomy. I guess the grass is always greener. As I replant the teasel seedling Ida has helpfully “weeded up” for me I consider my living in the moment resolutions.

This is my thyme and mint in the space made by prising up  a paving stone. Close enough to the back door so you don’t get that wet when procuring mint for tea in a downpour. 

Inside the house resembles a Life of Grime montage. I’m about to do some basic sorting and clearing tasks. I’ve made a bolognaise sauce for tea. Z has swimming tonight after school. He has his first school swimming lesson this morning and I’m hoping it went well. Must buy another towel as well to ease the pain of double kitbags… I did just cast my eyes over at my scrap mountain but think even I draw the line at fashioning a patchwork towel out of rags. Also can’t think it’ll help with the weirdo teasing at school.