Recently, there have been a few days when I’ve had snippets of things rattling around in my head ready to burst forth into a babble of quirky thoughts and anecdotes to be shared with you. But, as life would have it, everything conspired to pull me away from this blank sheet of paper and the liberty to share the recent happenings in my world with you.
Today, however, I am here in all of my crumpled and exhausted glory – armed with the nourishment of a cup of warm cocoa – and mightily proud of the fact that I’m writing to you while it is NOT raining!
I [drumroll please!] have been trying to nourish all aspects of myself. And, before you even complete that thought – NO, I have not been stuffing my gob full of food! Rather, I have been taking the time to consciously dedicate some time every day towards reading. As gardening helps revive my spirits and clears my head, reading helps me to relax and sink into a world of infinite possibilities.
In the garden, I seem to have finally conquered the soaker hose set-up. My 50m of irrigation now successfully does about one third of my planted garden. The engineering of the hose didn’t quite do what the label said it would, at the end point. The setting for zero water flow at the end (as a stop-cap) actually still let water out. But, with other hose attachments in the garden shed, I was able to rig up a stop-attachment that works. I don’t think the rose hedge is going to mind a funny looking attachment ending at its edge!
The potato patch seems to be coming along, it got its second big feed recently (all organic of course) and the crop seems to be lush and full. The Sharpes Express really is a larger plant than the Red Duke of York variety. I prefer the RDY foliage though, purple and pretty. Harvesting will start at the end of this month and it looks as if the Hubs won’t have to buy tatties for maybe 2 months! If that happens, it will be a big win!
Most of my seedlings have been planted out now, all of them later than they should have been. This year was a tricky one to manage. With the prolonged winter weather having a knock-on effect, things are being planted at least a month later than they should have been. This far north, with a shorter growing season naturally, the subtraction of a month does not give much time for a rounded approach to an emerging garden. So, I’m afraid there will be no salvia sowing for me this year, and I am not sure about a second summer crop.
But, to try to compensate we have been attending to our veg plots – you remember the disastrous onion ones from last year? With their wooden edging already in place from last year (to supposedly deter little pups from jumping in) we are filling these plots high with soil to create a raised bed. And, I’m taking the time to line the sides with weed membrane so nothing starts to grow through the cracks – you know that annoying way weeds and grasses have of absolutely showing up exactly where you thought they couldn’t! It’s a painstaking process barrowing all that topsoil from the gate to the croft to the back yard – and most of it is uphill. Eeep!
We don’t make things easy on ourselves do we! Ugh. I blame this one squarely on the Hubs. Last year, during lockdown he got on the veg bandwagon. Having grown up on a small holding farm that grew a number of crops for sale, my own focus was never on veg. I had always liked the flowers my mother grew for sale to the local floral shops. But last year, the Hubs decided we should plant veg. He was going to dig the veg plots himself along the lines of how the traditional farmers who lived here 100 years ago would have done it.
Cue massive sigh!
This meant that he dug all the plots on a sloping part of the back yard, instead of on a flatter area. The reasoning was that drainage would be improved, especially since we have quite wet winters and springs. All good I suppose, except we don’t have any crops growing over winter, and the hilly, sloping area he chose is quite rocky. Anyway, the potatoes are doing well (and they do churn up the soil and displace stones as they grow) so that bed is fine. The ones we are trying to rescue and turn into raised beds really should never have been located in their current position – especially since we have a flatter area, 10 steps away. But, we work with what we’ve got, right?! I’m making the most of my rocky not very earthy beds. Watch me triumph in time for next year’s offerings!
In the last few weeks I have read about 5 books, 3 of which have been for pleasure. I told you I was gearing up to read Circe and Pachinko, and I’ve completed them both. While they’re both on the bestseller lists, these two books are markedly different.
Circe is a bit contrived – it tries very hard to be a book with the depth of storyline that delivers a resounding life-lesson about identity and self-worth. It is precisely because you can see the author trying to manipulate this destination within the reader’s mind that, for me, it failed to move into the category of superiorly written books. However, it was a good and interesting book to read for enjoyment and the passage of time.
Pachinko achieved what Circe could not. It is immediately a more powerful book that will linger with anyone reading it. Character development is quite good for the main character, as is also well done for Circe. But, as with these epic stories of journey spanning many generations, the supporting characters in Pachinko are only developed to a certain degree, some of them only lightly touched upon. This in itself isn’t a negative comment about Pachinko, because indeed only so much can be achieved within the machinations of words set on a page.
I quite like that extra dimension of thought (and being) that comes with the enforced reading time each day. I have a feeling that the new Allende will be devoured soon, but maybe I need some witches and dragons in my life before the next heart-wrenching journey through the backgrounds of very real histories and cultures of the real world.
In the meantime, I’m off to watch some TV. I’ve been through some Turkish, South African, Colombian and Icelandic series recently. This is not new for me, over the past 11 or 12 years I’ve been delving into Korean, Japanese, Indian, Danish and Swedish tv. I sometimes find the hyperaction and hyperdrama of American tv overdone and predictable. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when that is welcome, but as with everything else variety is required. Besides, there are some really artful souls out there.
