Garden Therapy Week 1 - Bones

I’ve done the ‘bones’ section of Alana’s Week One exercises. Having spent the day in the garden, I have decided that I’m just going to concentrate on the lower half of the garden for now (Levels One, Two and Three).

1. Make a complete list of areas which need repair, weeding, improvement or movement. Make a list of possible solutions.

• Make a bin store to hide the bins outside the front door
• Repair bottom of fence behind site of Old Shed
• Repair or replace slats on table top
• Build a new fernery to replace the old butler’s sink (and freecycle the sink). The new container needs to be narrower than Big Cat’s bottom so he can’t sleep in it and squash the ferns.
• Get hanging baskets for either side of front door
• Get new front door (which is already on so many other lists…)
• Make planting plans for Levels Two and Three

2. Make a list of tools needed.

• A water source (probably a freestanding rainwater butt as we haven’t got the room to attach one to any of our down pipes). 
• A compact hose to attach to the water source

3. Find a garden centre you love.

Done(ish). I know what my favourite garden centre is, but it’s about three times the distance from here than other, lesser-but-OK garden centres, so I have a hard time justifying the journey. I also love getting plants from random people in town, e.g. at the smallholders’ market, shop owners who have been growing seedlings out the back, jumble sales, the car park attendant…

4. Set a budget.

Hmmm. There is no available chunk of money for a budget (apart from for the new front door). I’ll just have to do things as I can afford them. Getting plants, etc shouldn’t be a problem, though.

(A possible colour scheme? From www.cottageliving.com)

 

A Day in the Sun

I love being self-employed. I was working until 2 am last night and then got up at normal time because I had planned to do some research in an archive for a museum project I’m working on. I looked out of the window, saw the sun and immediately changed my plans. I’m going to the archive on Friday and doing Friday’s work this evening when I’m home alone. And today? Today, I have been playing in the garden.

I have done my sweeping of twigs and debris, gathered together all my pots, planted some herbs (sage, parsley and oregano) and gossiped with the neighbours. I also moved the table and chairs down to the planned seating area on Level Two, but discovered there wasn’t room, so then moved them up to Level Three, which is working out a lot better (I’m sitting there as I type this) - more room, more privacy, and fewer pissed off bees. 

So the seating area and herb garden is now just going to be a herb garden. I would post a picture, but my camera battery is recharging at the moment. Instead, I’m going to do the rest of my GT week 1 homework while sitting in the sun and drinking tea.

I’m really confused…

OK. The sole purpose of this post is to ask for clarification on a couple of comments about the pictures in my last post.

Exhibit A:

Lorijo said: “I love that fence!”

Exhibit B:

Alana said: By the way- Zooza -you have the best fence ever. It’s amazing.

Exhibit C:

Zooza says: Huh?

I just see a bog-standard, slightly knackered garden fence that has been erected in the only way possible given the huge railway sleepers inserted into the ground as fence posts. Aside from the eccentric stepped look because of the slope of the garden, the fence itself is very common and run-of-the-mill (a pun! I actually got our boards made at a local sawmill) here in the UK. 

So… I am genuinely interested to know what you like about the fence. Maybe you can help me to love my fence, too.

I’d also like to know what a ’standard’ fence (i.e. the cheap and practical option) looks like in your part of the world.

Thank you! You will of course be credited in my forthcoming book, “Building Fences Across the Pond: a comparative analysis of garden structures and water features and their role in  21st century cross-cultural communication”.

Garden Therapy - The Basics

I am so glad that Garden Therapy has arrived, as it gives me the perfect excuse to stop blogging about my struggles with my wardrobe and get back to less emotive topics. As it happens, I have had a very garden-intensive weekend, what with dismantling the shed yesterday and spending a good few hours at our vegetable allotment* today.

Like Alana, there have five areas in our garden, although I suspect the whole lot could probably fit in her defunct vegetable patch. First up, we have steps coming down from the footpath to the front door:

I’d like to redo the surface of the concrete outside the door, perhaps with some brick the same colour as the steps. I also need to build a bin store and find some way of adding a bit of greenery along the wall at the left.

Immediately outside the front door is the site of the old shed:

Seating and herbs in pots will go here.

‘Rustic’ steps (presumably built by someone drunk in charge of a pile of rubble) lead up the centre of the garden:

The whole garden was just bare concrete and brick when we moved in. We planted some little ivy plants and then turned our backs for a few years. We now have a bit too much ivy, but it does soften the lines well. I have often wondered about doing little mosaics on the step risers. These steps turn right and come to level 3:

(I’ve just noticed I’ve included a bit of our washing on the line in this photo. Oops). This is a difficult space. The ferns are great - they are just inside the gate (opposite the window in picture 1) and are lovely to look at all year round but the container they are in has to go. I think this will just have to be a display area, though perhaps a BBQ could go here, too.

More steps lead up to Level 4, which is roughly level with our bedroom window and covers the whole width of the garden. I tried repeatedly to get a picture of this from the upstairs window, but the camera kept on cutting out. These are the steps and the right hand side of level 4: 

This is the left hand side:

The bikes are tethered to the table because they used to be tethered to a tree that was cut down a couple of weeks ago on level 3. They will be going. The line across the picture is a retractable clothes line. Level 5 (a low wide wall) can be seen in the background with pots on it (the shed is on this level on the other side).

That’s the end of the tour. Now to answer Alana’s initial questions:

1. What is the problem with your yard/garden/balcony/potted plant?

The structure is completely bonkers and the plants are overgrown. It needs unifying and tidying up.

2. What would your garden/landscape say?

This ivy is strangling me.

3. What is lacking that you would like to do?

I’d like a really comfortable seating area that can be reached without the need for alpine mountaineering skills. A little BBQ would be good. Ideally, I’d like it to be toddler friendly so my godson can come and play but that really isn’t going to happen unless I turn the whole thing into a giant ball pit.

4. How would you like your garden/landscape to be described?

Creative and colourful. I could try toning it down, but realistically I’ve got to work with what is there, which means going down the bonkers-but-tasteful route. It’s got to be more a work of art than a ‘useful’ garden. I do actually quite like the unusual structure as it means it has the potential to be truly interesting without too much work.

*Allotment Update:

Growing well: three types of lettuce, radish, carrots, potatoes, broad beans, swiss chard, weeds

Growing less well: a row of mysterious, unlabelled alliums - maybe leeks, maybe spring onions? Either way, looking quite feeble

Sown today: cauliflower, spinach

To sow this week: courgettes (zucchini), autumn squash

In the Garden

I am pleased to report that The Shed Project is now officially completed. Here is the interior of our new shed:

With a lot of sorting and clearing over the last few weeks, I have managed to get all the DIY equipment from inside the house and the contents of the old, bigger shed into this one. Everything is also nicely labelled with words I understand (”small bashy things”, “big bashy things”, “things to make holes”, “gooey stuff”). It would have been good to be this organised before I started dismantling the house, but hey-ho.

Today, we dismantled the old shed (which for quite a few hours was known as The Shed That Wouldn’t Die). This is the space that is left:

I had to really hack back the honeysuckle because it was threatening to pull the fence down once there was no shed to support it which is a shame, but it should grow back. I also wanted to clean up the earth and roots at the base of the newly-exposed wall, but discovered just in time that we have a colony of white-tailed bumblebees nesting there. Apparently they only nest in one place for a season, so I’m just going to leave them be and deal with it later. 

While I was tidying up, I was thinking about how this little space could be considered a ‘room’ in Apartment Therapy. I know I want it to be a seating area and a herb garden, and was wondering if thinking about it in AT terms could be a useful approach. And lo! When I finished and logged on to check everyone’s blogs, there is Alana suggesting Garden Therapy. Perfect timing!

 

Ola!

I’m back in Ol’ Blighty. Madeira was wonderful and it was great to get away. Not so great was the fact that I managed to incapacitate myself on the second day, so we couldn’t do much walking. We managed one levada walk, which was amazing, if terrifiying in places (as I’m afraid of heights). Jim took these two photos after I had managed to shuffle along a particularly scary stretch, with much hyperventilating  and swearing and thoughts of lemmings (I was safely around the corner clinging to a tree at the time the photos were taken).

This was probably the worst part of the path:

And here is the view down:

Yikes.

I did enjoy the walk immensely. Unfortunately, when we stopped at a bar for a drink at the end of the walk, I managed to trip on a two inch step outside the loo and heard snapping inside my foot. A trip to hospital for x-rays showed nothing was broken, but that the tendons and ligaments and ‘meat’ (as the Portuguese doctor put it) were badly torn. So, not more walking for me. Instead, I learned to sit around doing nothing.* 

Whilst doing nothing I had three revelations. The first was that I had massively underestimated my capacity for consuming chick-lit. The second revelation was a bit more useful (and probably blindingly obvious to everyone else). This was that I really make life harder than it need be by trying to do everything myself. DIY. Clothes-making. Everything. Having studied my toes (which were more in my eyeline than my navel) for a few days, I have come to the conclusion that this ‘must do it myself’ attitude is a mixture of perfectionism, a misplaced quest for ‘authenticity’ and an outdated sense of poverty. This must change.

The third revelation was that I’m too fat for my own taste, so I’m going to lose two stone. Once I’m back to my normal weight, I’ll be more up for a bit of real wardrobe therapy. Doing my work-at-home wardrobe has been very useful, as it is one step up from PJs and made me put the WT approach into practice, but it is very much an example of ‘It’ll do”.**  However, I am still left with nothing to wear in the Big Wide World, which I have to admit is because I am a Big Wide Girl and unhappy about it. 

*On the foot front, I now have beautifully purple and blue toes, but the swelling has gone down and I can get about now. I just have to be careful for a few more weeks.

** I’ll post photos of the work-at-home wardrobe this weekend, so you can all be underwhelmed and struggle to find nice things to say.

Garden Plans

Over the weekend, we finally assembled our new shed at the top of the garden:

(To the left you can just about see the hazel tree which the tree surgeon coppiced heavily a couple of weeks ago. This should grow back quite quickly into an attractive crown.)

This is a Big Deal in many ways, not least because the shed is no longer in the house. It is a replacement for this old shed which was falling apart when me moved in and has just deteriorated over the ten years that have passed since then:

Other things wrong with this old shed are:

1. It is right in front of the front door and blocks precious light coming into the house

2. It’s ugly

3. It leaks

4. It’s very hard to open the doors

5. Now we’ve had a couple of trees cut down and more light into the garden, it is in the perfect spot for sitting at a table, drinking tea and relaxing.

This is the view from inside the house:

Won’t that look inviting as a little terrace with pots of herbs, the honeysuckle and a little table and chairs? I’m also going to build a little hutch to house the bins. And we’re getting a new front door.

There’s quite a bit of wrangling ahead to get everything from the old shed into the new one along with various DIY stuff from the understairs cupboard. But I have fun plans to whip the garden into shape. I’ve planted a few herbs already and bought a tomato plant today. I was also cheered to see this list of low-maintenance perennials at Unclutterer.com. With a bit of work this year, next year the garden should be looking beautiful. 

Right. That’s me done blogging until I get back from holiday. I hope you all enjoy yourselves while I’m away and I’ll “see” you at the end of next week!

Positive and Negative

I forgot to do the final part of the Week Seven tasks:

HEART: Name one positive thing you intend to do for your image/self-image/look and one negative thing you vow NOT to keep doing.

The positive thing I am doing to trying to improve my posture. After all the “head up high, tummy in, pelvis under” advice over the years, a simple description in Tim Gunn’s ‘A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style’ finally made it easy for me to put this into practice. In this book, he talks about the ‘Bistro Position’, which is the way you hold your body when squeezing between tables in a packed restaurant. It was a lightbulb moment for me and I am reminding myself to adopt the Bistro Position whenever I remember. And it’s true, good posture does make a world of difference. I aim to keep plugging away until it is second nature.

The negative thing is that I am going to stop assuming that all the photos I see in magazines are real-life images. Wende’s links to Jezebel really opened my eyes to the reality of photoshopping. I never knew…

Leftovers - WT Week 7

I’m going on holiday tomorrow so I thought I’d whizz through WT Week Seven today.

Party Clothes

I bought a new dress last week:

As usual, the photo doesn’t do it justice. The colour is a sort of warm mushroom and it has more of a gentle sheen than the glitz in the photo. Also, it was reduced to £9. I bought it to wear to a friend’s wedding in June, but I think it will also be a good standby posh dress for emergencies.

I have also decided that the peach lamé number still in my wardrobe will go on eBay when I get back. I’m more curious to see if anyone wants to buy it than the cash it might generate.

Exercise or Sports Clothes

Yeah. Um. I dusted my trainers (translate: sneakers) back in Shoes Week. I also have a navy blue Speedo swimming costume and just checked to see if it had been eaten by moths and it’s OK. The only time I will ever wear it is when I have the opportunity to play at a water park with slides and rapids and stuff. I love those, but I hate swimming.

Oh, but I did buy some new walking sandals last week for our holiday (we’re going walking in Madeira):

They make me bounce like Tigger and are very supportive. I love them.

On the walking holiday front, I did have a crisis last week about what to wear. As you know, I’m quite overweight at the moment and I half-heartedly tried on various items of outdoorsy gear in shops before having the startling revelation that all I needed was the shoes. I plan to follow our Victorian lady foremothers and walk in skirts and dresses. The shoes look a little weird with dresses, but who’s going to complain? Sartorially sensitive mosquitos?

Uniforms, bridesmaids dresses, etc.

Nope.

Luggage

All sorted. One wheely suitcase. One weekend bag. One little rucksack. One giant rucksack ready to hitchhike round the globe.

Umbrellas

I just counted and we have five in the house. I think there is also one in my car. This is fine by me as I like to keep a little stock of them. I’m forever leaving them places and it’s also good to be able to send guests away in a sudden downpour with their own brolly. 

Phew! All done. That was easy.

General Update

On the work-at-home wardrobe front, I spent Saturday at the sewing machine doing fixies and alterations and finishing a jersey top I was making. I’m also knitting a wrap kind of thing at the moment and I’m not sure it will be finished by the end of next week for the Great Unveiling, but I’ll give it my best shot.  

The perfect accessory

After all the soul-bearing and vein-emptying of the past week, I think it’s time for a little levity. I was saving this for Accessories Week, but have decided to upload it now.

Oui, c’est sexy.

(From icanhascheezburger)