Happy Saturday!

This made me smile. It's titled "My Dogs greeting me after returning from 14 months in Iraq, pre-arranged."

Have you ever seen tails wag so fast!



(following the crumbs from Andrew Sullivan)

Kitchen, Reinterpreted

I've been doing some cleaning and re-arranging.

brush with fame

I saw playwright Tom Stoppard up close and unguarded in the Photographer Gallery book shop yesterday. He had just bought something and was about to leave. He lingered a bit though, almost didn't leave at that moment. He lingered long enough for me to be certain it was him.

My confession -- a summer romance

Cartier polo, originally uploaded by Peter Meade.

There are certain things that evoke an English summer like no other -- Wimbeldon tennis, strawberries & cream, vegetable gardens bursting their borders with fresh veg, Pimm's on ice, the Proms at Royal Albert Hall -- and figures like this man, his suit really, spotted at a recent polo match. No caption necessary.

I wish I could take credit for this photo but I can't. It's by photographer, Peter Meade. Follow the links and browse his images of a version of English life that only exists outside London. He specializes in equestrian (including polo) and cricket photography. I admit to being a little more interested in the horses than the entire ethnography of the "horsey set", but it's all very very good.
Excellent, in fact.
He's one of my favorite photographers found in my wanderings through flickr.

Which brings me to my confession. . .

Some people consider it an addiction, but I prefer to think of it as a picture-perfect romance. The things I find on flickr and jpgmag sometimes make me swoon. I read books and such during the day, but at night I browse flickr and jpgmag. I'm learning so much about photography, film and digital, from reading the discussions and viewing the work of various photographers from around the world. One of my favorites on jpgmag lives and photographs Iceland. In the meantime, I carry my little digital around with me everywhere and sometimes a small film camera too.

So, maybe it's a summer romance -- photography and me, but I think we'll be together for a long time to come.

blackberry bliss

In the softening light of early evening, blackberries eaten off the bush taste of a perfect harmony of sweet and tart and earth.


the remains of the harvest

Worth a smile

I like this. It made me giggle and smile.


I Wanna Be Yours
by John Cooper Clarke

I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours

I wanna be your raincoat
for those frequent rainy days
I wanna be your dreamboat
when you want to sail away
Let me be your teddy bear
take me with you anywhere
I don’t care
I wanna be yours

I wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out
I wanna be the electric heater
you’ll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion
hold your hair in deep devotion
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
that’s how deep is my devotion

Some things in life you can always count on

You know that law of real life about waiting around for something, it never comes, then when you start to do something else -- Bing! -- what you'd been waiting hours for magically appears! Of course, if you are expecting a call it never comes.

I love that law of real life because it's true. It never fails.

Like this morning. I was expecting delivery of the last of the plants & grasses to go into the back garden. I thought they were going to call before they arrived. I was expecting a call before they arrived. The morning passed -- no call, no delivery. So, I decided to try dyeing my hair. I'd recently tried this with less than desirable results so I was determined to try again and get it right. Besides, I was sure that as soon as I got the dye in my hair and the alarm went off signaling time to rinse it out to prevent my hair from turning a crazy color of teen-goth black/purple and then all falling out, the plant delivery would arrive!

Like I said, I love that law of real life. It never fails. Almost. The hair-saving alarm didn't go off. BUT that other law of real life that says when you rush to the grocery store to grab a last minute must-have ingredient still sweaty and dirty from working in the garden all afternoon OR have just put the dye in your hair, mask on your face, etc. you'll come face-to-face with the cute guy.

So, with dye covering my hair, latex gloves on my hands, wearing nothing impressive, and about 7 minutes to go my door bell rang. The plants had arrived and on my door step was the cute garden center Polish/Russian/Hungarian/manly-accent man. The one who looks at me, says hello and smiles every time I'm there. Yeah, so I've got all my plants now.

It's Garden List Time!

Here's what I hope to get into the ground by the end of this weekend:
4 chocolate Cosmos (a velvety deep red-brown blossom and smells like dark chocolate)
3 white Cosmos
1 apricot foxglove
1 deep purple delphinium
1 pale pink delphinium
1 light blue delphinium
2 Bishop of Lancaster dahlias (deep red blossoms, dark leaves)
2 blue fescue grasses (Elijah blue)
2 Ucinia grasses (burgundy leaves and slender spikes of tiny white flowers)

Of course to accomplish all this I have to:
hack out another clump of that ugly grassy stuff, only a bit smaller than the huge one that took me hours to remove before planting the lavender; AND

prune back one of the roses which scares me (the pruning, not the roses) but I'm sure it's not flowering anymore so I can't do that much harm, right?



Of course, now it's just started raining.

EEEeeeeEEEEeeeEeEeEeEeEeEeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

Something grew and I didn't even notice them!
I have beans. Not sure which ones, have to wait for them to fully ripen.


And this was the view in the front of the building as I headed in tonight.

Before & After

I'm quite pleased with myself. I've finished the clearing and replanting of the front streetside space.
Now, it's just routine maintenance.

BEFORE (10 May 2008)


NOW (2 July 2008)


Just in time too -- tomorrow, the last of the plants for the back garden plot are to be delivered. There are quite a few of them too.

Gardening -- Lite

Tired.
Watered the front window plants. Planted the Mexican orange blossom (Choisya ternata 'Sundance') in front plot.

The lavender has survived so far, but at least one of the baby foxes likes to sorta 'lean' on the front ones a bit.

I'm Lazy

I'm 45. That's my excuse. I'm still exhausted from all the digging and pulling and tugging and yanking out of the ground I did over the weekend.

Those bushes and flowers I was going to plant today. Didn't do it. I'm pooped.

I did dig the dirt out of a big old sink. Pix tomorrow. Under it was a HUGE toad. I needed it to find another hiding place but it was scared of me. I was scared of it! I called binooby's hubby and asked if there are posionous toads in England. He would know this -- being in Wales (d'oh) *Men know these things* He's a sweetie, he managed not to laugh out loud at me over the phone or correct my pronunciation of any words ;) His advice was probably not, but wear rubber gloves and wash hands throughly immediately after moving it.

But every time I bent down to try to get it, it hopped. Slowly. It was really FAT! I think it was just living under the old sink and eating all the fat, really FAT, slugs that wandered by. His sides were bulging! There were a bunch of slugs under the sink, too.

And this one gi-normous worm. I have never see a worm this fat. It was really FAT, almost as big as the slugs and definitely longer. I was scared of it too. Man, was it confused, I think it might never have seen light or something, like those gi-normous worms scientists discovered deep, deep in the ocean. This worm under the garden sink was like one of those. It was so dark under there that even though I had turned the sink on it's side and it was still daylight I had to use the camera's flash to get a decent picture of this gi-normous-never-seen-daylight worm. So I got a couple of neat pictures of it.

Then I moved it to my compost bin. It's gonna be really happy in there. I just know it. It's dark and there's rotted horse poo and rotting food and stuff. Worm Riviera, right?

So that's today's did list:

I removed a big bunch of dirt and roots from an old sink. . .I forgot to tell about the roots in the sink. They were crazy. Really crazy. When I got almost to the bottom of the sink I hit an obstacle. Eventually, I got an edge of it to come up so I pulled thinking it was just a bit of roots. NO, it was a huge, really HUGE, mesh of roots that wrapped all around the bottom of the inside of the sink. I literally was able to peel and the dirt with it like a sheet of contact paper. Crazy stuff in that garden. Wow. Anyway, the did list --

Fat worm into compost bin. Frightened fat toad into hopping. Made peanut butter/honey sandwiches for wild critter (the foxes, natch). Oh, yeah -- I did some academic stuff too. *Oh, yeah! I'm growing garden biceps & triceps, but I can't show them, they ache*

Pix tomorrow. I'm that exhausted. I'm old I tell ya! 45. Can't I get a zimmer yet?

Lavender & Rosemary (& some ugly stuff than had to go)

I'm exhausted, but proud of myself. Here's what I did today. It took much longer to get that big clump of some-sort-of-ornamental-grass out. Then I planted 12 lavender plants and 2 rosemary. I hope the rosemary will become bigger bushes. They are supposed to have pink blossoms. The lavenders are white and deep purple, 3 different heights and different foliage, one very silvery. All smell wonderful!! Apparently, slugs don't like them, but the bees love them and the one of the tiny song bird type birds was interested too.

BEFORE yesterday and today's work (beyond the table on the left):


MORNING:


AFTERNOON:
1 (I cut all the leaves down yesterday, but today getting the huge root clump out took ages)


2


EVENING:


The rose was already there. The trellis was blown down in a wind storm. The roses must be finished blooming before they can be pruned back & the trellising repaired. In the meantime, I'm working around it.

Then I unloaded 5 of the 75 litre bags of compost into a big compost container that my neighborhood neighbor who owns the local cafe, gave me. It's great! I completely love having it. Load stuff in the top, remove from the bottom. So much better to use than the compost pile in the back of the garden! I added veggies from the little Saturday organic market in front of the cafe.

Then it was time for the foxes to come out again!


Tomorrow is an easy gardening day. I'm just gonna put some of the shrubs and other flowers into the front.

Good Grief!

The owners are gonna have a showdown about the garden. Found out today that the owner downstairs has been renting her place out saying that the front part of the garden belongs to her tenants. The nicely cared for part. The part that my landlady, and now I, have been caring for spending our time and money on. When my landlady called her about sharing maintenance costs, downstairs lady hung up on her!!! So now, my landlady is calling a meeting of the owners to discuss the garden and it's maintenance.

See, this is what happens when there is shared ownership of the land, but not of the flats. Really, it should have been worked out from the start, when that woman bought in a few years ago. Gotta say, this is one of the only times, I'm glad that I'm a tenant.

Of course, it's gonna to really burn me up if the tenants downstairs start using the front of the garden instead of some another section. It wouldn't take that much weeding, pruning and mowing to make the 'middle' section usable and pleasant. He said they just want to sit out sometimes on the weekends, have their friends over sometimes. For now we have agreed that we will keep each other posted on when we are planning to have guests over. So I told him right then that I might be having someone over tomorrow early evening and on the 28th.

The Big Picture

The Grand 'Design'

I finally just had to put it on paper because I can't remember it all. I expect this will take all summer/fall.



Of course, this does not include the one plot of vegetables in my neighbor's section of the garden. I might plant it out this weekend.

Follow the foxes. . .

Ok, here's a link to a bunch of fox pictures.
If you need a password use: PASSWORD
Click on a picture to see a large view.

The picture are blurry, they move around almost constantly and it was dusk.
Enjoy!

The babies aren't weaned yet. Surprisingly, she allowed them to nurse out in the open in view of me the past few evenings.

Medicine sandwiches aren't working so we're being sent some stronger medicine.

I've found a great garden centre and got great help refining the design I'd drawn up: shade front, big front window ledge, the front u-shaped bed, all the back flower beds -- including some ground cover to replace the ivy (once I get it pulled out), and "Corsican mint" to go around the path stones which need to be dug out too. So cute, "Corsican mint" and smells nice too. So I started buying the plants for the front and flower beds. I'll pick them up on Friday.

Horse Poo & Bubble Bath

Today I re-located to: compost bins and pile, a huge pot, flower and vegetable beds -- 9 bags of 2-year old organic horse poo compost. Each bag contained 75 litres of compost. They were very heavy.
This is what the front now looks like. It is ready to be planted. I'm considering camellias. This is one of the plots I covered.


Here's what it looked like when before I started a month ago.

My landlady came by, we walked the garden and front and discussed what I can plant. She's pretty much giving me carte blanche and will reimburse me for whatever plants I buy. She also taught me how to cut back roses. Neat. She also helped me bring out her table. I've decided to put a few plants on it as a centerpiece. This is what my garden space looks like tonight.


Then I took a long perfectly heated bubble bath.


Monday, I'll post a link to pix of the foxes.

Not about gardening!! Can you believe it?!

Second post of the day.

I have art! Earlier this year when two Americans visited. For each it was their first visit to England & Europe. They each gave me a work of art made by them. I took them to be framed and picked them up yesterday. As soon as I arrived home I unwrapped them and hung them.

One is a painting by Bri from Louisiana. It's in my front room facing a huge mirror on the mantle piece so it really I have two paintings. I love the koi, it reminds me of an old family friend, a former professor of my parents' who is now 93, an expert orchid grower with a koi pond in his back yard. Oh, he's also a world re-known historian too, but his love is his orchids. So for me, this is a little piece of North Carolina in my little London flat.


One is a photograph by C.H. Paquette. This photograph. I have the first in the link, "Atlantic City, skyline". C.H. has a special touch with Chocolate Polaroid. It's an amazing film and his work with it is nothing short of magical to me. Now, every morning when I wake up, this the view I have just outside my bedroom door, in the hall, protected from direct sunlight.


Beauty is all around me. I am lucky.

I have horse poo & I'm happy about it

The horse poo arrived this morning (Friday). It's really 2 year old composted organic horse poo. I figured if I was going to have to pay for dirt, it might as well be really good stuff, better than I could 'make' in my own compost pile. Well, this is.

The man who delivered said I should use it soon because it's full of worms. This is good, very good. The worms will pull the compost down into the existing soil. This is even better, it means I can just spread it and plant directly into it without having to dig it into the ground. YAY, thank heavens for small blessings. Oh, did I mention, it's 15 bags, 75 litres in each bag?

Not sure what it will do to the slugs and snails that get covered over. Like these:



I also mowed yesterday. For all the weeding and clearing I've done, I still find something truly wondrous about the look and smell of a freshly mown lawn. There is a hand push-mower here and I use it. I love the way it rattles as I push it back and forth. The grassy patch is small. It only takes about 10 minutes to mow it, then I sit in my chair and read for a while warmed by the sun and surrounded by the light fragrances of the newly cut grass and the roses.

Progress & Rain

So, this weekend, my downstairs neighbors decided to set up a table and chairs, with sun umbrella (in England?!?!?) in my portion of the garden. You know, the beautiful rose filled, rose scented section that I, and I alone (with help on rosed by my landlady) have been weeding and pruning back in to shape. It's incredible to me that people will not do a lick of work to improve or maintain the garden but as soon as someone else has made it pleasant to be in they are quick to stake a claim and settle down for a day of garden leisure.

The weekend was dry if cloudy, not too hot, cool even. Perfect weather for weeding and especially mowing the grass. But I couldn't do it because I was uncertain about how to deal with the table and chairs issue. I mean, they just materialized while I was out on Saturday. They tenants downstairs never said a word to me about the garden about putting table and chairs out there. I'm really appalled, I would never do something so arrogant. I could never watch as someone else did all the hard work and then when things are prettier, neater and weather is getting better saunter out and settle on to enjoy the space. The nerve. It bugs my landlady too (I adore her) because this has been a problem even when she lived here. The woman who owns downstairs doesn't contribute a thing monetarily or come by and work in the garden then tells her tenants that they can use the garden. The nerve of some people!! Last year, I stopped maintaining the garden after a while to stop them using it. It worked but the garden looked like crap and it made me a bit sad to look at it and embarrassed to have people over for parties out and has made that much more work for me to do this year. But I'm making progress. Things are shaping up nicely.

Sunday I'd wanted to get some work done in the garden before going off to a museum exhibition. I couldn't they were out there, not weeding, just sitting at the table. Did I mention that I don't even like the look of their table and chairs either?? What to do? What to do?

I decided that to not let things linger too long I would have to do something today. I also decided that there was no reason for me to feel defensive about the situation because they didn't even bother to talk to me about what they were going to do. I told a friend that I wondered if they were taking the 'it's better to ask forgiveness than permission' approach to this. Surely, the remembered that there had been a table and chairs out in the garden when they moved in months ago.

So, I took action. This afternoon, I moved the unsightly table and chairs onto the unsightly concrete alcove below my bedroom window, completely out of my sight but just outside their apartment windows. Yay me. Later, in between rain drizzles I managed to get errands done (including a bit of groceries), I got the last of the pruning in the front done (that is now ready for new plantings!), and this evening it stopped long enough for me to go into the garden and weed out a bunch of stuff along the flower bed's edge and the path. Ivy and other vines will now become compost.

my garden chair


Then I was hoping to sit outside for a bit and read one of my new photography books for a while before coming in. But as is the way with English weather, as I was getting to the end of my weeding energies it began to rain yet again, but more steadily this time so in I am for the night.

runner bean blossoms


the first strawberry -- it was sweet like candy!

Sleep well, all.

Surprises

1: The foxes are growing up. I hadn't seen them for a while and then one morning earlier this week they were out. It was so surprising to see how big they have become! I've not seem them all together lately though. And not seem the mother for over a week. And one was scratching -- mange -- *sigh*. So, I'm putting out a bit more medicine sandwich pieces. But who knows which ones are eating it. Last night, I saw one running around eating all of them. *sigh*



2: Well, now I know how my rosemary is getting broken. The foxes are big enough to jump up on low things. Including the big pot with the rosemary in it. Two were out, chasing each other around. First, she jumped over it. Cute. Next time, she hopped up on it and looked around before hopping off and racing around all the plants. Not so cute. *sigh* The rosemary will survive, it's creeping rosemary not the upright kind.

3: Despite the cold and wind and possibly even little bit of hail and bugs, my beans are developing blossoms. The runner beans are red, the French dwarfs are white with black spots. Surprise, Surprise.

Insects vs. Me

Written, yesterday.
I've gotten almost all the tomatoes transplanted. Only 3 more to find places for. 3 out of the 26 I started out with this morning. *sheesh* I sure hope some of these eventually make tomatoes. I also 'discovered' some insect eggs on the underside of one of the tomato leaves.

First instinct: Get rid of them!

But I remembered the ladybug eggs, so I left them there. I finished transplanting the seedling.
Then I washed my hands and reached for my laptop. Internet searching...reading...searching...reading...searching...
No luck. However, I did find the British Tomato Growers' Association. So I called them, described the eggs and the woman told me she wasn't a technical expert but they sounded like a bad insect not a good one.

I tried to wipe them off with a wet tissue and they all peeled off as one sticky bunch. AND it turns out they were really hard. REALLY. HARD. That confirmed it for me. I had read about something that lays eggs with sticky stuff to attract even more bugs. Good GRIEF! I flushed them and went on transplanting the rest of the tomatoes.

THEN I noticed a dead leaf on my mint plant and reached to take it off. IT. MOVED!!!!!!! It was big. It looked exactly like a dying leaf. I went for the camera. After I got a few images I took the pot to the outside trash bin and "relocated" it into it.
Interesting, huh? If anyone reads this and knows what it is please leave a comment telling me what it is? thanks.


What else I've gotten done:
* transplanted all the salad lettuces and parsley into a window box. I'm keeping them inside for a while.

* transplanted the cucumbers and planted a few more seeds into the big pot of soil my neighbor has left for me. It's outside.

* planted a few more okra seeds, outside and in. I just stuck some seeds into the pots outside.

* put all the pots of transplanted tomatoes on the shelves outside with the others.

Now, having finished all that, I'm going off to an organized protest and march to the Chinese Embassy.

The sun was shining and warm today so I took advantage of it and did the mowing. I finally was successful with the hand mower. I tried using it last summer and found that some pieces were missing. This year I got it all put together. Once that was done I sat in a chair near the roses facing the sun, leaned back and soaked up some of the warmth for a while.

The view from my chair in the garden. It smells wonderful here:


As the sun moved through the sky it became cold again. I'm still wearing my big red winter wool sweater and the heat is back on at nights.

This afternoon I examined my okra which is not doing well outside. Turns out that the underside of the leaves were covered with insects, brown and green. Ah, aphids, aphids, aphids. I went to the store and bought some Ecover liquid dish soap. I immediately made a bottle soap water (a few drops) and sprayed each plant. We'll see if they are still alive in the morning. I'd already decided to start some more okra plants once I get the big containers planted.

The foxes are mostly coming out at night again so I can't see them but know they are there. I briefly saw a new one today. At first, I thought it was one of the babies that was getting big fast. When it turned I realized it was a grown up and not the mother. It's coat is redder and in very good condition. Maybe it's the daddy of the family.

Things in my garden that I hope to eat one day soon---

Strawberries:


Tomatoes:


Green Beans:

The Garden Gods Might Hate Me

Of course, The Universe waited until I'd transplanted my tiny, fragile, warm-soil loving heirloom tomato seedlings and put them outside to turn the climate cool, cool and cooler. Then it rained. Now, on the face of it, rain is good. But it was followed by The Day Without Sunlight, so no warmth.

What's a nervous novice vegetable gardener to do? Nothing, absolutely nothing. They seem to be doing fine. *shrug*

UPDATE (I've been holding on to this one for a few days, it's now the 19th. Anyway. . .): It seems to be getting colder each day and without real sunlight it's pretty cool/cold during the days too. I want to put all my vegetable plants into the summer house to be warmer, but the reality is that they have been outside for quite a while and are acclimated, I guess.

zucchini


In other news, I won't be posting any news for a few days. Just a little stomach upset (as the parents would say), I think. MD appt tomorrow morning. I haven't eaten for 3 days. It's Miso Soup & Brown Rice time tonight. *sigh* And with the weather cool-down & rain, I'm not spending much time outside anyway.

This vexes me a bit because I had wanted to clean up the flower beds some more, not just weeding but just removing some stuff.

Also, I wanted to weed, prepare and plant a plot JW is lending me in the back for the carrots, fennel and celeriac.

And mow the back and rake the front and do shrub pruning.

Oh, well, maybe I'll be up to getting it all started in a few more days. However, it is great to have daylight from 5AM to 10PM. *ahhhhhhh*

**Foxes are doing fine. My neighbor, JW and his partner were here over the weekend and he says the mommy looks much better than a few months ago when he saw her. The kits are still amazingly cute :D
More news soon.

Oooops & Oh, Boy

I wiped some insect eggs off one of my bean leaves two days ago. Several hours later I remembered that I'd see mating ladybugs on one of the plants a few days before. Oooops! Sure enough when I looked them up the eggs I killed were ladybug eggs. Stupid me! The larvae would have eaten the aphids on the bean plants. Oh, well, live & learn. Research first; slay later.

Yesterday was busy one for the foxes and me.
In the morning, the vixen was out playing with two of her pups. Only two. I tried not to worry. I do worry too much. In the afternoon the whole family was out in the garden. Apparently eating somethings out of the grass. Mom fox looked at me often. When I wasn't leaning out the bathroom window they would come into the center; when I was in the window, she would retreat into the shade out of my view. I'm getting curious to learn more about fox behavio(u)r.

I planted a second set of seeds a few weeks ago and they are all ready for transplanting. I have a lot of work to do this weekend. It's time for me to capitulate and buy compost. Fortunately, I have found a good source for bulk organic compost at a reasonable-for-here price. Actually it's a very good price. *sigh*

It was a slow garden day. I didn't work on anything. My battle with one particular ivy root in the front and the big bag of sand in the back pulled something in my back that didn't belong pulled. All seems to be righting itself.

Last night, when I took the peanut butter medicine sandwich to the garden I stayed outside. First, I took some new pix of the all the transplants. Then I decided to sit down on a little stool on the ugly concrete and see what might happen.

Eventually, as it was getting dark one kit came bouncing down the path towards me and into the ivy. A short while later out he/she came and off to the back of the garden again. Was he the bravest testing the situation? Then two came out. Then all four were out. I'm assuming that mom was hidden somewhere nearby watching the entire scene. And me. I sat still moving only my eyes or moving my head when they were busy with their noses in the grass or ivy searching for slugs or snails or some-such.

For the longest time, they were grubbing in the ivy opposite me and the grass. Then someone came onto the concrete and then another. They began playing around. When another passed right in front of me, I made a little noise which made it run away a small bit faster. I'm ambivalent about them getting comfortable around me. I won't be sitting out like that all the time.

Eventually they did what they always do -- play! They came running around on the concrete, around the shelves of vegetable plants. Usually it's only 2 of them but this time at one point all 4 were around me somewhere on the concrete. I could see 3 of them but not the fourth. I turned my head around to see one sweet little thing just sitting directly behind me and looking at me. The others were very near too.

They ran around a bit, sniffed and nosed at things then off to the grass again, tumbling and pouncing and tumbling on each other. A short while later two of them started grunting at each other. Now, to me the sound was reminiscent of the sound my cats would made before vomiting, but the fox babies just made the sounds and then pounced on each other playing again. After a while more of this they all headed off to the back of the garden. I sat for a while more, but it was getting so dark I couldn't see anyone any more and my legs were getting numb :)
We had a busy day, the foxes and I.

Ah, HA!!!!!

The comfrey is NOT comfrey!!

It is something called "Green Alkanet" and it was originally brought in to be a part of Victorian gardens and the root makes a red dye, sometimes used as a substitute for henna. Now, it's just a pain in the garden. Worst of all, it wasn't successful in Victorian gardens because the flower wasn't big enough :o

I returned to the ivy in the front/street-side space. Got all as much of the ivy as is possible, right now. AND next door neighbor helped me by climbing down in a window well and lopping of the tree(?) that was growing there. It had gotten very tall to reach ground level then it started sprouting branches and leaves and continued growing to almost outside my window (~10'). Well it's done! YAY, OH, YAY!!! That thing was hideous.

I'm having second thoughts about the bamboo. It's gonna require water, in all that I'd read that hadn't really been mentioned. So I'd rather opt for some things that are more native, less water-needy.

In better news, I may have been *under* watering the rosemary. The gardening guy's recommendation? Put water in the sink, put the plants directly into it, no pot. Let them soak until they are heavy with water, their soil expands around the roots, re pot. In this case, I used to soaking to transplant them into their intended terracotta pot out back. 2 parts old tomato compost mixed with 1 part sand. Planted the watered rosemary plants in and added one small bottle (1 quart?) of water to see if it drained or absorbed. I think it absorbed or was draining very slowly because I didn't see any come out the bottom. Only time will tell now.

Best of all today I transplanted the last of the beans from their seeding pots and started transplanting the tomato plants. They have all finally started looking tomato-y. I didn't have enough pots for all of them. Everything went out into the garden on shelves.

I think the next big mission is to find enough affordable compost and a large quantity of packing popcorn for the large pots that will become the ultimate home of most of many of these things.
My 4 large pots = 40 litres compost, 2/3rds full.

Ivy, Ivy, and not an inch to spare!

The mission for the day was to cut away the mess that in the front of the house. It's the first thing people see upon arriving. We all have to walk past it entering and leaving. I hate, HATE it. So I was both dreading and eager to get rid of it. My dread was because it involved ivy. I despise ivy. I don't know who thought it belonged in gardens but they deserve an Ig Nobel Award.

It's a small space just inside and to the right of the entry gate. But it took ages, I wasn't feeling well, I thought the exertion would make me feel better. It just made me really, really, really tired. So tired I couldn't go out tonight to a fun evening. :( I stopped several times during the clearing to rest and to consider the next necessary steps. I may have been too severe with the bush in the corner, but it really doesn't belong there it just sprawls over the fence onto the sidewalk and into my neighbor's front space. It's stripped down now. There is more ivy and there are other bushes that will need pruning as well.

After the corner bush, I just went after the ivy. The snails were not happy with me. Oh, well, there's still space for them to hide. Until I get that done too.

The next challenge is what to put there. I'm considering bamboo. It's screening, there are types that do not spread, but clump so are easy to control. And it sounds neat in the breeze. I think they do well in the limited sunlight out front. The cafe uses it and it's on the same side of the street as this building. Bamboo.

BEFORE:

AFTER:






At this point, I could do no more. I went in. I decided to take a peek out back. I heard something, rustling, I looked out the bathroom window and was surprised to see the foxes. Mom and the babies, they romped, she sat, watched. I took photos and a little video. What fun they had! After quite a while, they headed to the back of the garden again. She stopped, turned back and looked up at me. She knows I'm watching and wanted me to know she knows. I suppose.

This one was rather brave coming onto the ugly concrete right next to the house. One other did, too.






This is why it's hard to get a photo of them. They rarely stop chasing each other around. This is the only one with all 5 of them. Mom is behind the weed pile, on the right. Watching. The tips of their tails are white. Just the very ends. Cute.













I think they like messing about with the snails, then eating them. YAY! All the weeding I did makes the snails and slugs easier to find.

Remains of the day

Or, how to lose your glasses and an earring while wearing them.

The back corner of the garden where the chair and table are placed needed a lot of cleaning out. The brick edging for the plot was completely overgrown.

BEFORE:


AFTER:


Not glamorous and the sun moved as I worked so "AFTER" looks almost like a completely different place.

And a few critters.
Snail (it only looks good large):



My upstairs neighbor has dug two ponds in his section of the garden. Frogs (or toads) love it. They also love to eat snail and slugs! So, this is the 2nd pond at the very back of the garden, near the foxes den.
Frog (also looks better large, but...):


He also build a fox den with the branches & brush from his pruning last year.
Fox Den (photo is by bluewingteal):


During my back-and-forth through the garden, I surprised the grown-up fox and later saw the back-end of a little one making a hasty retreat. Fluffy!

I'd placed the medicine sandwiches out and I returned inside for the evening. I perched with camera at the bathroom window and waited. First, the mommy fox roamed through checking things out. Certain that I was gone, she retreated to the back of the garden and a few minutes later she and her babies re-appeared. It was really too dark and they were racing around. 4 kits and their mom. They were having a great old time. They raced each other all over the front (my part) of the garden. Someone went into the bike shed, up and around my shelf of seedlings and to the edge of the entry alleyway. Eventually someone ate some of the sandwich pieces I could see. But they continued racing and rolling around on the grass in the shaded areas. All over. Quite fun.

Now, everyday seems to involve a loss of some kind. Yesterday was the keys locked in and me locked out. So, on this day, somewhere after weeding and before the fox sitings I lost my glasses. A remarkable feat in some ways because they were on top of my head. And yet, I could. not. find. them. I walked back and forth, squinted, then gave up. In the end it's a miracle I didn't step on them but they were found. Not where I was looking, of course.

Then there was the earring. Before the glasses but after the weeding one of my earrings popped free. When I felt it pull free I froze, I stood still and yet it escaped me, fell to the ground. I went stood and looked down, slowly. Then got on hands and knees, I think I know what fox poo looks like now, maybe not, anyway, no earring. I couldn't give up, it was there. Eventually found. A bit away from where my focus had been, and under some grass. Adventures in gardening with dilly. :\

A short, clean one!

Just a short update. I don't expect anyone to keep up with this all. It's really just a garden blog for me. But, you know, if you enjoy this, good on ya!

The fox or foxes ate the peanut butter, honey, whole wheat medicine sandwich pieces I left around last night. I'm such a hippie huh (Whole wheat?? For a fox? I just could see buying a cheap loaf of fluff bread. Ever.)

Oh, and I now have doubts that the stuff is comfrey. I was told by neighbors and landlady it is but I did some googling looking for information about it's gardening uses (as fertilizer water) and none of the pictures look like these tiny purple flowers. *sigh*

Here's what things look like a day after my first two onslaughts.
Lawn has brown paths through it but will green up over the next few weeks. I really don't care though. I hate lawn turf. Waste of space. On view: the pile of twigs and branches.
Isn't that concrete awful??!?!?!? I wish I could get rid of it. Put there by a previous owner ages ago.

EDIT: This picture is deceptive. You are only seeing about one-third of the garden. Behind the end of the grassy part is about two-thirds more where there is the summer house, a rather big compost pile, more garden space and a neighbor-made fox den. That section is my neighbor's garden. Photos of that another day.


The new rosemary and in the background -- the huge pot of grass clippings and the pile of stomped weeds/comfrey.


Next: the transplants! Mint, zucchini, okra, 2 types of green beans & around the corner the strawberries and a few more beans.


AND the heirloom tomato seedlings are getting their second set of leaves.

The War with Comfrey & Caring for The Foxes

Today I:

Bought new rosemary plants. Three. This is 'prostrate rosemary', in other words, it will drape across and out of it's container. While at the nursery I had a talk with one of the gardeners. The diagnosis was that I should have kept them outside not inside because at the nursery they were always outside. AND the soil I put them into needs sand to make it drain better, so...

I came home with the plants, plopped them on the bathroom window ledge which gets direct sunlight for about 10 hours a day. Then I headed out to the local nursery to buy sand. They will be delivering because I just couldn't see myself carrying a 25 kg bag of sand home on the bus. Since they are delivering I got two bags.

Now, before I went to off to the local place I decided to do some transplanting. I decided to do this on my front stoop with the front door opened and the door to my apartment opened. This made logistical sense because there is no water source in the garden and access to the garden is downstairs through a locked gate/door. Easier, I thought to myself, to transplant, water, and then carry the pots into the garden. First I did the last few okra sproutlettes. They look pretty pathetic, but anyway -- done. Then the strawberries, they are looking sort of okay and the mint which is looking great. Then I looked around and thought, might as well do some of the beans, their roots are bursting out of the peat pots and they are getting tall. Fine. Got more pots, soil, water, and settled back down on the top step.

It had been a gorgeous day. Sun, light breeze, warm, but not too. Now, as I began on the beans there was a nice cross breeze blowing through my apartment and across the front stoop. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move -- the door. Damn! before I could lean back and stop it, it slammed shut. The resonant 'thunk' that only a big, solid Victorian house door can make. Oh, but I have my keys in my pocket, I've been keeping them there every time I went in and out.

Except. This. Time.

I was locked out. Out of the building. Out of my apartment. And worst of all --- out of the garden. So, I did what I always do when I lock myself out. I went to the business next door and asked if someone could help me climb into my second story bedroom window. The last time they had to do this was at night in December in the freezing cold. When I was talking to the man who opened their door, I had an epiphany, "Hey," I said, "maybe I could give y'all a set of my keys?" He liked the idea. So, he got one of the guys to bring over the ladder, he propped it on the garden gate/door I climbed over and jumped down. This took a while because I'm terrified of heights and really didn't like the idea of having to hang then jump down to the concreted walkway. And am terrified of heights. *changing light bulbs makes me dizzy* Did I mention I'm terrified of heights? Well, I managed it. Not bad for 45. Yay, me.

From the other side I opened the garden door and in we brought the ladder. Into the garden and up against the wall next to my bedroom window. First, moved the tray of seedlings on the window ledge. Then climb into the window, replace the tray, get keys out of already opened apartment door. Out front door, with keys and into garden to help the guy with the ladder. Back home and did a quick search for my spare keys, labeled them, potted everything up, put it all in the garden. Dropped off keys to the office next door and off to the local garden center/nursery place.

Back from making the arrangements to *buy* sand and have it delivered (I can't describe how much it vexes me to have to buy sand or soil, much less have to get it delivered), I went to the grocery store because by then I was starting to feel sick having only had a croissant and a few spoons full of yogurt and coffee for breakfast. Ate. Went into garden to check on the things I'd set out yesterday, all seems to be doing ok. I was going to come in, but thought I'd pull up some of the comfrey. SOME.

It's addictive, weeding is. I was talking to my friend T. earlier and told her that I now understand that gardeners' obsession with ridding their garden of unwanted growths, i.e. weeds. I started on the comfrey, it pulls up easily, so I kept going. And going. And going. And going. And going. I got it all. It will come back but that's not the point. For now, it is gone. Keeping it tamed will be easy from here on.

Then there was that really thorny, viney thing growing from the base of the brick wall. It was mixed in with some of the comfrey. I got the comfrey untangled and pulled up. By now, the pile of comfrey was about 2 feet high. I stomped on it to crush it down and headed to the garden house for those fantastic limb cutters with adjustable long handles.

On the way back to the viney, thorny thing I stopped to lop off a few thorny branches that were drooping into my path and regularly grabbing my hair as I went back and forth. A few more steps and I stopped again, this time to get the last of the comfrey along the path but tucked under some other flowering big thing. It's in for a heavy pruning but not now. Now, just the comfrey (and that viney, thorny thing). Comfrey extracted, I moved on to finally arrive again at the front of the garden and the thorny, viney thing. But first, I noticed a few other spikey things growing out of the concrete. Snip, snip and tossed into the appropriate pile of debris. Then to the wall and to find the end of the viney, thorny thing. There were two sources. Snip, snip. It was severed. Carefully picked up and off to the pile a few steps away. But it pulled back. There was a third viney, thorny part growing from another place in the concrete. Snip, snip. NOW, it was all into the correct pile.

So now, in my garden I have three piles of debris to be bagged and removed:
1) a giant pot measuring about 3 ft. diameter and 3 ft. high filled with the grass clippings;

2) a considerable pile of green weed-age, mostly comfrey and the viney, thorny things

3) a pile of twigs and branches, no leaves, from the gigantic buddleia that had become a tree growing out of the brick wall It and some bricks were finally knocked loose by a big wind storm a few months back.

I felt I had accomplished some sort of garden maintenance, but there is still much more to do before it's in order again. And there are those vegetables to get into the really large pots. Great, huh? I was done gardening for the day. The sun was setting. I went in and took a shower.

While in the shower, I looked out the window. I was admiring all my handy work of the past two days. Then I noticed the dog. But it wasn't a dog!! It was a fox! It must have been waiting for me to leave for good. The lights coming on in the building were probably it's sign the coast was clear. Now, it looked up at me looking down at it. We stared at each other. I hadn't seen him/her for a while. I thought it must be a little confused and maybe even a bit vexed that all the grass was gone, all the weeds and other tall cover gone, too. And the little brown spot in the lawn where it probably liked to lay or nap slightly hidden, was now fully exposed, too. It turned and walked a few steps across the lawn and stopped to bite and scratch near the base of it's tail. Not a good sign. The tail didn't look good. It really does have mange. I hadn't been sure before, but now I was certain. I was going to have to go into the garden once more to leave it some medicine to treat the mange.

Before he left, JW has given me some fox mange medicine and instructions. He'd gotten it from a friend in Sussex who works with a wildlife org. So, after my shower, I read the instructions, pretty easy and peanut butter and honey would do, no need to buy Marmite (yuck). So I made a peanut butter and honey sandwich, cut it into 6 pieces per the instructions applied the meds and took the pieces to the garden. I left pieces in various places along the path I saw the fox take across the lawn. It went in a semi-circle, stopping a couple times to stretch, sit and scratch. Repeat twice then trotted off into the back of the garden out of my view. So for good measure I left the last two pieces of sandwich near the compost. I'll keep doing this for a couple weeks and hope that I also see the fox (or foxes) more regularly.

Now, the thing about the foxes is that there are foxes all over London. Most people consider them pests. But not my neighbor JW and me. We appreciate the critters, they are part of the little eco-system of the garden(s) and, like the neighborhood cats, are good predators. There have been a few generations of them out there. And he's used some of the branches from tree pruning to build a sheltered den for them in the back corner of his half of the garden. So, he's left me the medicine to help the one or ones who visit our garden.

I hope it works.



UPDATE (a few minutes later): Good news! the fox (a fox) is out in the garden and seems to have found the medicine sandwiches. No lights, just saw some movement and heard rustling bushes, heard one little yelp.

The Roses and The Jungle

Ahhhhhhhhhh. Finally. Finally. Finally. Some of the roses have started to bloom.

This morning I set up one set of garden shelves outside and moved the transplanted beans, okra and zucchini outside. It's warm enough at night now. I wonder if the birds will eat them all before I wake up tomorrow. Or if the foxes will knock over the shelves and nibble them.

This evening, I attacked the jungle of neglect that is the garden proper. My landlady left me to tend her beautifully cared for garden and I have neglected it since last fall when it started getting cold and very, very wet. Today, I fought back the madness. I borrowed the mower from my neighbor across the brick wall. Lovely man! That made taming the grass a breeze.

Then I took the weed-wacker (they call them 'strimmers' here) & the limb cutter to the profusion of comfrey that is taking over everything. Some is fine but this was too much. It has taken over the little slate walkway. So, a bunch of it had to go. So too, a few fat-stalked weed/bushes, some of the ivy. The ivy is gonna be a project all it's own. *sigh*
Now I can bring the table and chairs out and have folks over for dinner outside. Ah, joy. Pure joy.

Anyway, you get the idea. Gardening joy. And the roses have started blooming.