Gardening within liMitS: A new garden centre...

Gardening within liMitS: A new garden centre...: 25May 2018 This weekend involves lots of food and it taking my mind off surgeries and biopsies. We went round the Letchworth Food Festiva...

A new garden centre...

25May 2018

This weekend involves lots of food and it taking my mind off surgeries and biopsies. We went round the Letchworth Food Festival and had lovely Spanish churros. Then I lunched with MS Friends, a group where the local MS Society group subsidises lunch for people with MS at a super pub in Henlow. My youngest spent lunch up a tree but had a healthy fruit salad with her ice cream!

garden centre cat

We visited the garden centre we had not been to before which had amazing window box plants, in amazing oranges, reds, and tricolour perlargoniums. They had beautiful olive, oranges and lemon trees too.

Purple aquilegia in our garden

Tree climbing over lunch

n

Eton mess

Spiky allium I think is called Christophii

I have said our garden is overgrown but finding treasures poking up between the green stuff adds to the pleasures of the garden. I did try to eradicate some of the pink in our palette but finding it looks better in small bunches with my special spiky alliums coming up between. I found my husband still expects me to try and grow fruit and veg in my planters but I had planted more flowers and am hopeful of them lasting a bit longer if we cover the plants in the winter.

Spiky shiny allium peeking through other plants

Under the ground... and in the Air!

25th May 2018

Damp and dingy!

My daughters' schools celebrated summer half term by tacking on an extra inset day! What to do?

It's kind of wet out and I have very little money for halfterm so it's

going to have to be helping out and being creative. Youngest made sticky gloop yesterday and Oldest needs to get her (my ancient travel America) backpack ready for a camp tonight in deepest darkest Essex.

I said I had an MRI scan yesterday but I didn't say it wasn't in the clanky tunnel: it was the shiny doughnut you see on hospital dramas, very sleek and hi-tech. My friend who visited me on Wednesday said his father in law had been treated for cancer in the States and their treatments are now miles ahead of the UK. Well, lack of investment in the NHS will be to blame...Get your insurance funded!

We will definitely get out – there's only so much dancing around the living room I can do – and it can be a reward for filling their boxes for things to sell at the garage sale trail organised by the girls' schools PTA.

Watching the gardens at Chelsea on the telly!Finding shrimp and tadpoles

Ashwell Springs with the Beavers

Shrimps and Tadpoles in buckets

23rd May 2018

Wednesday night involved pond dipping with Beavers and seeing muntjac deer babies. I was scared I'd end up on my bottom totally soaked but it was my youngest who filled her wellies with water.
I had gone to a support group afterwards and had an appointment for an MRI today, so I am finding myself fully immersed in kind people and survivors who are giving me the benefit of their experiences.
My health being currently as it is I also didn't get my act together to get tickets to see any of the flower shows... but I was kind of shocked to hear Rachel de Thame explaining her absence from this years' Chelsea as being down to her recovery from breast cancer, a slightly prescient thread in my own life. Being able to be in the garden last week was also the tonic I needed to forget about my impending tests and ultimate surgery, so I will be trying to get into the best areas of my own wilderness to practice some of the tips and garden advice to keep myself from getting glum.

My daughter loves the blousy scented peonies! 

Some of my favourite plants were shown on tonight's tv, and explain why some of my favourites just won't work or would do amazingly in our garden, so if there was a fairy godmother out there, can I get a tree fern (and a digger) or some airpots to grow me some eucalyptus? As it is my hubbie has said already that my 2 silver birches were maybe an ambitious/wildly silly tree to plant in the centre of the garden? Oops, I did it again...

Alliums are everywhere at the moment!

Very diddy silver birch

Last years perennials

Acquilegia in bud

I really must find a solution for the grass taking over the beds again – its definitely a couch grass issue and I've spotted mare's tail in the front again, and our council has stopped taking garden waste unless we pay a yearly fee, so a compost heap is definitely becoming a necessity sooner rather than later, but it's not happening while I am incapacitated by surgery... hmm, it has been said that we took on a big overgrown garden when we bought this house, and in my enthusiasm I hadn't anticipated the work would be held up by ME! However, I just have to start rethinking how to get things to happen. Any ideas gratefully received...

Insomnia every time I go to bed???

23 May 2018

Temporary Highs and Lows in my Rollercoaster World

It's not that brilliant being someone who goes to bed feeling SO shattered I feel I could sleep for a week and twenty minutes after my other half is gently snoring I have given up trying to even close my eyes. Insomnia is a killer, a ninja warrior, and I find myself trying to make sense of it on the computer, which really isn't an answer as anybody who's studied sleep disorders knows that computer glow really doesn't help.

Hey it's been an ok day today (at 23.59 I should maybe rephrase?)  as I did a bit of invigilation work, I've been to Sports day at my oldest's school, I got my rubbish packed up in a van by Love Your Junk a local company, and instead of plastic everywhere I now have an expanse of ... well, an open space in the back garden. But having typed that I've killed a few minutes metaphorically and I'm now wondering whether I can try to go back to bed?

Also, a weird thing happened, as my oldest got offered a place at an alternate secondary school on her wish list and she wants to go there. I was happy with the first one but I am also happy to go with her choices. Currently, she doesn't know anyone who is going there, but she preferred it to her third choice which we had accepted. I wonder whether, as well, she got bumped up the list, as she had put the closest school third, this school second and nationally they are trying to say everyone got at least their second choice. Others we spoke to today were a bit miffed they hadn't been offered this school instead of the one we didn't put down (well, we hadn't chosen to put it down for a reason?). It's all a complicated game in this 22nd-century world and I don't find my bridge hand is good enough generally. 

I can't help thinking that my wish that things in 2018 needed to start improving may well have been heard? They just need to now find me a regular job, please.

Mountains have disappeared...

Roof tiles have disappeared.

A few screws went into
the making of this pot holder...

PS: And its now 2 hours later and the wind is banging that side gate really hard, banging and clattering made me get up and check. Weirdness but no culprits to be seen. A neighbour said he has seen foxes in their garden and maybe we have blocked a foxes escape route but no sign of anything when the lights went on...

Colours everywhere!

Royal wedding weekend!

Lots of people got caught up in the hype over the Royal Wedding and I have to admit to lumps in my throat at times. But it also brought home to me that I am not in a terrible place really. I do have so much to be thankful for. We have made a home in Letchworth and there are many reasons it works for us as a family. I have a temporary health condition to deal with but I will, and life will go on.

I can pull things out in the garden on an endless loop and the things I plant will either like it or shrivel up. The winter running late with really cold patches did for some of last years plants, but others are coming back up fitter than when I put them in. Gorgeous clematis we planted when we moved in have grown back stronger this year, and I think we will need to be smart and scour the local FB sites for slabs people are giving up and track down bargain gravel stockists. My grass needs taming - at the moment it is growing madly in places which makes me wonder if the lawn is semi couch grass? I definitely want the garden to taken on a different vision but my budget is still minuscule and the things I can do are going to have to be creative. I don’t do long term plans very well. We still have four sheds after 3 years and that was the first thing on my wish List? I was going to get rid of plants but we still have many of the ones I planned to cull.

Who can stay miserable on a glorious day?

This is inside our shed...

Mid May 2018

And it’s threatening to be hot, hot, hot!

I have finally spent some time in the garden - at my daughter’s school they have great big raised beds for every class, and I helped the kids weed for all of fifteen minutes but I made my daughter very happy. Nothing like that for lifting my melancholic gloom.

I came home and decided that must be what I spend at least an hour doing, but I get home and I get distracted from the task I set out to do. The garden is getting cleared on Tuesday. A helpful company I have discovered through our gate man (yes we have terribly sturdy new gates from a local carpenter, Michael who I also found online at Next Door dot com!) called Love Your Junk is coming to clear the puddle of stuff outside the house. Yay,yay, yay! Life is moving, some of it in the right direction.

We have beautiful acquilegias coming up all over, the bulbs I got last year have been amazing and I need to plant the two trees I got in the supermarket. I can’t be gloomy!

The news is full of Royal Weddings and one wonders what nasties the government is slipping through? It’s difficult to find out when the mainstream press is owned by far flung billionaires with their own oh so money grabbing agendas. People with MS sometimes hit the headlines but often for the wrong reasons. The half? sister of Meghan Markle has MS but she is not coming to Windsor. She has made her own headlines but I haven’t read any of it - it’s not going to be something I am agog about.

I’ve also planted some things today. We got some bulbs at Knebworth and a couple of trees from Morrison’s (well we have lost a horse chestnut so we can grow something quite big.) I’ll probably get queried over my placement of the trees but I am an organic gardener - I grow things where I like!

And after gardening I had lunch with a fellow MS Warrior who has gone through a recent lumpectomy at the same hospital as I attend. We talked for ages and it’s good to have someone watching out for you who has knowledge in common. We are similar but different. Which is what makes for good shared experiences. I almost missed the bus, but all was well chez moi.

Side gate

Alliums were added...

Side gate

Things are still emerging from the earth.

Gardening within liMitS: Mayday meanders

Gardening within liMitS: Mayday meanders: 14th May 2018   Anniversaries: Third year in?  We have officially lived in Letchworth for 3 years. And boy, they have been full.  I’m into m...

Mayday meanders

14th May 2018 

Anniversaries: Third year in? 

We have officially lived in Letchworth for 3 years. And boy, they have been full. 

I’m into my twelfth year of MS diagnosis with all the disruption that can bring and am now five days into my diagnosis of precancerous tumour on my right breast. And that has filled me with more fear, anguish and uncertainty than an incurable condition has. Crikey, I am absolutely terrified if I am going to continue being honest. Insomnia has hit several nights running and it’s currently 3 in the morning.

Relapse city is close - I can sense it. MS is unrelenting, I know that, but I continue to think I can slay the MonSter. Can I do the same with Tommy Tumour? (I don’t know if there is an acronym people use but Tommy is my name for now...) Tecfidera is my drug of choice these days and I don’t feel as anxious or cranky as I did on Rebif. I’ve asked the questions - has the Tec caused this? - come to think of it, has the seven years of Rebif? Or has another habit caused this invader? Again it’s a question I can ask but it’s unlikely I will ever know. So life goes on with unswayed optimism? Possibly a little bit shaken.

I set up this blog as a gardening blog, so I apologise if the last few months have taken a few detours from the primary goal, but life’s like that. We have found someone to fit some gates, and with the gift of blarney, I think he may help us to get rid of some of the rubbish too. Everybody knows each other in Letchworth and I think Michael knows Trevor our builder, and they run into each other at builders yards. (The ones we can’t find, which do great discounts to the Trade. I tried hard to find the cheapest gate supplier, but Michael is in the know...) Again this work in progress is showing promise. We may soon have a secure garden to Borrow A Doggy. Cody the Schnauzer may have a competitor in Jasmine the Greyhound!

Doo you see how full our life still is? Tommy or Alfie Asperger won’t take over, we won’t let them.

Cold and miserable?

4th May 2018

Warming up? No!

Why am I longing for a roaring fire in May? Because it is sodden well freezing that’s why! Who turned the heat off? Our soakaway must be helping... we don’t seem to be seeing the puddles next to the house we were getting used to. Having realised we are creeping towards the three (yes THREE year anniversary of our moving in date I should probably be booking some sort of party... but the mess everywhere makes me realise that’s not going to happen unless I am magically cured of all my ailments, not gonna happen anytime soon...

I have been wishing this mess away but today it just reminds me of what work still remains out there. We truly are at the end of our finance for the work on the house. Hence me learning to tile and grout the shower room and kitchen. So after that is finished (when?) I can start looking outside again...

Struggling, really struggling...

Sunday the 13th!

Feeling unlucky?

Making clay masks

Tha Green Man

I really just want to curl up and go to sleep. Maybe on waking I can imagine it’s all been a horrible nightmare... I don’t usually feel that way after a walk round the garden, but today is different. I am hit by the most awful wave of despondency that threatens the whole day.Yet things are growing. We have some ginormous rhubarb which tearing me away from my wallow Squeaky wants me to pick it with her.We also went to the local park which had a Maypole, Morris Men, clay faces and willow headpieces for the kids. There was a Green Man who turns up and tells stories.

But it allowed me to catch up with some messages and thinking, as I have been told that I have precancerous cells and a rather large tumour in my breast. I will have to have more tests, another scan and appointment with a plastic surgeon. Yes my worst fears have come to being advised that a mastectomy is the best way of ensuring the cancer doesn’t become dangerous.

Life took a turn no one can be prepared for and tidying the garden has lost its appeal...

Knebworth Garden Show

It's a hungry business, this garden fair...

K9 and Witches Hat made of sedums

Woolly garden.

Short back and sides.

6th May 2018

All the fun of the show!

I treated my husband, oldest daughter and her friend to the Garden Show while my smallest went to a party. We hit Knebworth just after 12 and trundled back and forward looking for unusual plants. I got sidetracked by bulbs again and bought some alliums and cannas. Also another slug product which gives the soil back its nitrates. I explained about my use of Slug Stoppa but he assured me this was another product worth trying. I didn’t see as many products for landscaping as I saw in Birmingham last year. Should I try to get back to that? Our budget for travel this year has disappeared after our kitchen work was finished... And let’s just see how my appointment at the QE2 goes on Thursday?

I had a rest when we got back but seems I am being beaten to it by the smallest of my daughters who have watered all my hostas. We lawnmowered and strimmered a lot of the overgrown areas until the battery died, so I am waiting for a recharge before cutting the rest. Think we are going to struggle to rebuild the compost heap without the purchase of a new composter - which was part of the plan...