Last night I sat swathed in my dressing gown, slouched across the sofa, having just had a long and relaxing bath. I’d been soaking my aching muscles in the hot, lavender-scented water after a long, satisfying day of Being Productive.
Since I went back to work after Christmas, I feel like I’ve been trying to catch up on myself. Usually I like to make the most of my weekends. But for some reason I felt inclined to laze around, or have bursts of doing ’something’ - anything to feel as though I hadn’t just slobbed about. I felt like I just needed to rest, and it was as if I’d given myself permission to lie in, and wander around in my pyjamas for most of the day.
Not yesterday though. After getting my hair (and feeling so much better for it), I came home and flew around the house being a Domestic Goddess, sucking up the ten tonnes of fluff that had accumulated since the vacuum cleaner’s last outing, and generally getting all the shitty jobs (quite literally, in some cases) like cleaning the cat trays out and changing the bins out of the way. I did it all in a mad whirlwind of speed and skill because I Just Wanted To Get Outside.
It was milder than it had felt in weeks. The watery sun was throwing a welcoming warmth - warmth! - onto my skin. It felt good. I plonked each of the rabbits outside to ‘free range’ under my supervision whilst I got all of my tools out of the shed. And methodically, therapeutically and satisfyingly, I worked through my veg plots, turning the crumbly soil over, extracting the weeds, cutting the edges straight. I wasn’t aware of how long it took me, only of the fact that it was something I’d been aching to do for a long time. Bobbin Robin sat in the hedge, eyeing me as I worked, piping his faint melody every once in a while, obviously impatient for me to move onto the next task.
And so I did. Next job - my mini woodland garden.
It’s tiny. It’s literally a small patch under the damson and apple trees that, in summer, is in shade for most of the day until the late afternoon when the sinking sun lights it up in a blaze of glory. In spring, when the fruit trees are budding, it gets a fair amount of sunlight and stays relatively moist, so is perfect for planting woodland plants.
But last year I neglected it somewhat, allowing the grass, bindweed and nettles to take over. With my wild daffodils and crocuses starting to poke through already, I had work carefully. It was a nice change from the more heavy-handed vegetable patch work. Almost like a different discipline. I cleared space around my emerging forget-me-nots, the wild primos
e, the oxalis and something else that I planted last year, but can’t remember the name of, or what it looks like exactly. We’ll find out soon enough.
As the afternoon sun sank quickly, the temperature rapidly dropped and I herded my rabbits back inside. I felt so satisfied - my veg plots just need some nutrition and I’m ready to go. I do still need to get some proper edging to stop the grass continually creeping in, and so I can also build the plots up with lots of gorgeously rich, crumbly home-made compost and leafmould. But it’s another step forward. At the moment I have time to do this. It’s so incredibly important to me.
After a quick cuppa and stop-off at Mum and Dad’s, I fired up the steamer and set about stripping more wallpaper off our dining room walls. I only have one wall left to do, and the ceiling, and we’re ready to start prepping the room properly for re-decoration. Steps forward. Good.
I should explain. For the past few years I’ve been embarrassed about the state of our home and my Smallest Smallholding. I haven’t felt as though I can have friends around. I’ve felt quite isolated because of it. I don’t allow anyone outside of the family through the door. We hide from the electricity meter man because we just don’t want anyone to witness what we live in day-to-day. The house is a half-baked renovation job, and the Smallest Smallholding has, for the past couple of years, been out of control.
But I want my friends to visit, and to be able to stay over. I want to welcome people into my home. I want to have friends and family over on warm summer’s evenings. So this year, I’m sure as hell going to try and get closer to being able to do that. Sharing my Smallest Smallholding, getting people encouraged, involved, excited about what I do - that, for me, would be an achievement.
Oh, and incidentally, I have a new job. It’s an exciting prospect. Things are going to be changing, for the better, I think. But more about that next time… I’ll write soon… stay tuned…
Weight: 11 stones 5lb (oops)
Tags: family, friends, house, planting, rabbits, renovation, Smallest Smallholding, veg plots, weeding
I’m sitting here on a bright, Saturday morning wondering what to do with my day. Well, I know that the first portion is going to be taken up finishing all my accounting bits and bobs. Dull, humdrum work but somebody (i.e. me) has to do it…
I want to get outside and get some fresh air. For four days this week I have been both baked to death and frozen in my office, where the windows don’t open and the air is dry. It’s so unnatural that I fear I am turning into an office zombie. One look at myself in the mirror this morning almost confirmed it; I look pale, tired, blotchy and just… unhealthy. I eat well - I get enough iron, vitamins, minerals and so on, but I think I may have also inherited my Dad’s side of the family’s pale gene. I need some sunshine. I need to look and *feel* like I’m living!
Tuesday evening was marvellous. The one saving grace about my commute to and from work is that I get to drive through some beautiful countryside before I hit the M1. On the way home, I amble down a winding country road past a free range pig and chicken farm, a tree plantation, an orchard and a vineyard. I love to just take it in as I drive through, but on Tuesday night it was a whole different experience.
For one, I actually left work in daylight. It was as if something had shifted in the season, like there was a definite signpost to spring. But it was the sunset that did it - throwing a beautifully warm and mellow orange light across everything it touched. I drove through my country lanes and just kind of breathed it all in, suddenly I felt as though spring was blearily lifting its head a bit and sleepily peering through one eye at me, just letting me know that it was on its way, but maybe not quite yet. And as I drove down my little road towards my house, the faces of all the railway cottages were basked in this amazing orange-pink radiance. It was so calming. And then I was home.
But of course, the next few days we were back to dull, dreary greyness. I don’t know whether the weather is particularly adept at reflecting my mood, or whether it just downright influences it. But I’m bored. So bored. And I’m starting to feel a bit trapped by my whole situation. But that may be changing. No, I don’t think I’ll be moving for a while - the thought both thrills me and scares me witless - but there may be changes afoot. I can’t say more than that right now.
Part of what makes me feel a bit more energised is seeing that things are changing, that I’m not stuck in a rut. I have a freelance-free weekend, which means that I’m free to do what I please. So, back to what I’m planning to do on this bright, cold, blue-skyed Saturday. I could finish stripping the wallpaper from the dining room. I could don a hat and gloves and weed my veg patches. I could nip over to the garden centre and get some bulbs for my mini woodland garden. I could start clearing out my greenhouse. I could take my Mum out to lunch.
Do you know what? I think I’ll do it all! Just because I can. I love having time to myself. I love finding ways to fill it.
Weight: 11stones 4lbs
Well one of my resolutions was to post more on my blog. I’m sorry I haven’t kept up as much as I intended - I managed to break my laptop. And with Rich working morning, noon and night, it’s nigh on impossible to boot him off so I can write.
But here I am.
Ahhh Fridays. I do like Fridays. Now that I’m in the throes of my four-day working week, Fridays are MY day. You know, when the rest of the world isn’t off work. I rise late, I write, I write some more and catch up on getting all those little jobs out of the way; bottlebank, money bank, library, tidying… Today I’m planning on starting another letter. I’ll plonk myself down at some point during the afternoon and scribble away, no doubt accompanied by the background noise of a terrible 70s film on Film4.
My Smallest Smallholding is… well. Hmm. Green and weedy is the most diplomatic way of describing it. Or perhaps ’slumbering’. Yes, I like that word. After the snow melted it was like an eye-popping explosion of GREEN. Everywhere was bellowing GREEN! GREEN AND BROWN! GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN! The snow also uncovered all the messy bits - the unkempt piles of leaves, twigs, weeds, unpruned shrubbery, wonky veg plot borders etc etc. Whilst the snow laid, at least it looked relatively neat. Ah well. Such is nature. I have a lot of work to do this spring.
My local garden centre does a brilliant deal on seeds at this time of year - 50% off, with many “buy two get one free” offers to. So I am planning on heading over there with an extremely limited budget and starting to thumb through the racks. I’m definitely going for squashes again this year. Although last year’s produce was rubbish, at least I managed to get the plant to actually fruit. So this year, who knows. We may produce something edible - it has been known!
I’m not going for potatoes this year. I call my small bit of England ‘The Smallest Smallholding’ for good reason, and potatoes take up a lot of space. OK, maybe I’ll relent and grow a row or two of Charlottes. They’re fantastic when they’re freshly dug. In fact, I doubt whether Rich will allow me NOT to grow them. But as far as maincrop goes, I can easily buy a big sack from the local farmer for around a fiver.
I asked Rich whether he’d eat strawberries, if I grew them. His response? “Depends if they have maggots in them”. Let me remind you that this year, Rich is 30. Yes, really.
And apart from my staple crop of sunflowers (seeds for the birds), onions and garlic, I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do. I think I’ll decide when I get infront of the seed racks. I have a feeling that this year, anything goes.
Weight: 11stone 6lbs
Tags: Fridays, onions, potatoes, seeds, strawberries, sunflowers, writing
As if you hadn’t have guessed, this post is going to feature that current bloging trending topic… snow. We’ve had our fair share of it here in Bedfordshire, and we also have among the highest number of schools closed in the country. Joy.
I’ve been feeding the birds like nobody’s business; as well as keeping the feeders topped up, I’ve cleared out three patches of ground and have been littering them with peanuts, raisins, rice, apples, suet treats, mixed seed, black sunflower seed and, on occasion when I’ve been feeling more affluent than I am, sunflower hearts. Truth be told, typically for January my finances are absolutely pitiful and I can’t really sustain this level of feeding, despite the current forecast for the continuing weather conditions.
But my friend Sam over at Bedfordshire Wildlife Rescue has given me a few pointers which will mean I can continue to help the birds during this time. I’m going to try her Winter Warmer Recipe, as well as smearing some peanut butter on the bark and branches of my apple tree, where the tits like to feed from.
Aside from feeding the birds, I’ve been a bit housebound. Yesterday I cautiously made my way into work, arriving half an hour late, but in one piece despite a few car-related hitches. As part of my drive is on the motorway, the latter part of the journey isn’t too bad. It’s just making my way onto the motorway that’s the problem.
I’ve been keeping abreast of the countless snow-related weather reports, and have been a bit bemused to hear the phrase ‘wartime spirit’ cropping up. It’s as if we simply can’t band together during any other time than crisis, or when we’re battling something, be it the weather, the government or some other threat to our home front.
Which is why I can appreciate a sort of perverse (or maybe not so perverse) enjoyment that a ‘crisis’ will bring. I know where I live, TescoTown, it’s like everyone lives in their own little box, and they don’t interact much. They don’t rally around each other or make sure the elderly and the vulnerable are OK. They sit in their homes and turn up the heating, complain about the terrible train service into London and all rush to Tesco to do a bit of panic buying, thus making the situation much worse than it ought to be. Silly billies. But then we are a commuter TescoTown. We’re not a thriving village. We’re not a community. We’re a collection of people living within close proximity. It’s sad really.
I also wonder if modern living is to blame. I use ‘modern living’ as a label for long commuting journeys, 24/7 access to our supermarkets, who ship and fly in produce from all over the world. If we shopped and sourced the bulk of our food and supplies more locally, would so many shop shelves be empty? Of course, the smaller village stores can’t supply everything from local sources. But if every town had its own local butcher, baker and grocer who in turn were supplied locally, wouldn’t we be much better off at times like these? Wouldn’t the country lose less money from ’snow days’ if we didn’t have to do 60 mile commutes in the first place? Or perhaps had more flexibility in working from home? I do wonder.
So whilst I applaud the smaller, more isolated communities for rallying through and helping each other, I also feel a bit sad that in ‘peace time’, by and large we don’t keep up the effort. Us Brits pride ourselves on our unwavering wartime spirit that we’ve clung onto since the ‘good (but actually, bad in terms of death and destruction) old days’, but it only seems to become prevalant when it absolutely has to. The way I see it, it’s as though, for most of us in our commuter towns and cities, it’s a very rare occurance.
So I’m left wondering whether I’m really happy where I live. Would I like to live in a more close-knit community? Am I looking at it with rose-tinted glasses? Is it actually tougher than I could deal with? Would I prefer to live somewhere where people knew my business, or somewhere where I can go about my business without worrying what people think, because basically, I’m invisible?
I’m wondering whether it’s time to think about planning a move to pastures new. Not that we can afford it right now.
Weight: 11stones 10lbs
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