Robin McKinley's Blog, page 60
April 25, 2013
Sigh
It’s been another fabulously gorgeous SHIRTSLEEVE day and . . .
. . . I’m not in a very good mood. In the first place . . . yurk, where do I start ‘in the first place’? Okay, top contenders for ‘in the first place’:
1. Speaking of fabulously gorgeous shirtsleeve weather WE’RE GOING TO HAVE FROST AGAIN OVER THE WEEKEND. And I have several brand-new trays of snapdragons and diascias sitting around waiting hopefully to be planted. As well as a few dahlia tubers that have been planted in pots* and will therefore join the frelling kitchen queue this weekend . . . Not to mention the petunias, begonias, geraniums, hippeastrums, sweet peas etc that have been out there a while already, when they aren’t cluttering up the Winter Table and the kitchen floor. And if I don’t get my glads in soon they won’t bloom till . . . after the first frosts this autumn.
2. Hellhounds are eating about one meal in three. Sort of. It’s hard to tell because I’ve cut back to about half rations . . . and they’re still playing a sort of hopscotch game the rules of which are opaque to me, where one of them may eat one meal/day while the other one doesn’t eat at all, or one of them will eat one third of this meal and two thirds of the next while the other one finishes the first meal and has two and a half mouthfuls of the next. Their ribs look more like toast racks every day. And as I have just been telling Darkness, who ate none of his lunch and has deigned to eat about two-thirds of his (half-size) supper, if I weren’t worrying about their making themselves ill, I’d just frelling let them starve themselves into a citation from the RSPCA. Fine. Let the RSPCA try and get the little ratbags to eat. How am I supposed to know:
(a) When they’re just being total little scum-sucking ticks and
(b) When they’re going to go over the line into making themselves ill?
I want to know BEFORE we reach (b), okay? Meanwhile the recycled kibble levels are getting extreme and eventually you have to throw it out. £££££££. Not amused. Not amused at all.
3. The hellterror has the runs. No, she has the fountains.
3b. The hellterror is also coming into her first heat. JOY. I don’t know if these two items of interest are in any way connected. I have known bitches who suffer bowel irregularities while they’re on heat but this is a little . . . ultimate. Hellhounds are not, fortunately, the slightest bit interested in local hormonal mayhem—at least not so far, but she’s not in full, you should forgive the term, torrent yet either—and maybe the first puppy heat causes maximum internal uproar and minimum exterior captivatingness? Dunno. But if she’s planning on having excretory melodrama every heat, she’s not going to keep her ovaries long enough to have a litter. Stay tuned.
The good news, such as it is, is that none of this is bothering her in the slightest. She’s the same manic little furball as usual.
4. The ME is biting me. Hard. Still. All this sunny shirtsleeve weather in the garden has been lovely, and the whole sudden change of season thing stuns normal healthy people too, and it may take them a few days to find their summer rhythm**. And the plants don’t care if you’re moving kind of slowly.*** But. . . .
4b. I’ve officially quit the Muddles . . . again. Damn. But I haven’t got the stamina for those two and a half hour rehearsals and I feel a little less than enthusiastic about exposing my never-a-strong-point lungs to that air in that church when I’m coming off flu; furthermore there isn’t time for me to learn the music, now, before the next concert. I don’t know what I’m going to do about singing; I am NOT giving up my voice lessons, but it feels dumb and silly not to be doing something with what I’m (theoretically) learning, and at my level of ability that’s some kind of undemanding group. And undemanding-group choices in this area are limited.
4c. Having cut back significantly on the amount of time I spend on the blog† . . . I probably haven’t cut back enough. I don’t like the feel of this go of the ME: I don’t like the glint in its steely little eyes. I think that look it’s giving me is telling me that the Muddles is only the beginning. I think I am going to have to do more hacking and hewing. This is sure to hit bell ringing . . . especially because of all the driving to this and that tower, and driving is always my most obvious weak point. At least the blog I can do on the sofa/kitchen table/bed.
Maybe I can knit more.
Maybe I can READ more.
But . . . sigh.††
* * *
* Large pots. Dahlia tubers tend to be large.
** Especially if it keeps going away and dropping everyone back in their fleeces and flannels again.
*** Yoo-hoo! Over here! Don’t forget us! We’re hungry/thirsty/an impenetrable jungle too!
† And GREAT GROVELLING REPEATED THANKS to all you guest-post providers who help with this.
†† And I am NEVER going to try to write an outline on Microsoft Word again. ARRRRRRRRGH. I can hardly wait to see what WordPress does to my attempts to outflank bloody Word’s idea of how to write an outline. . . .
April 24, 2013
WALL! WAAAAAAALLLLL!!!!!!
It’s alive!
Wall wall WALL WAAAAAAAAAAALL!!!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLL!! WALLWALLWALLWALLWALLWALLWALL!
WALLITTY WALL WALL WALL WALL WALL.
::happy dance:: Happy happy happy happy, happy happy DANCE!
. . . Er. Well. In its small but in-my-face way, the wall story has been rather TRAUMATIC. Now . . . I’ve already had the other piece of that wall rebuilt by Atlas, I think the first year I was here; opposite that now entirely replaced wall is Phineas’ house, the third wall of my garden is my house and the fourth wall . . . I hope that wall stays up because I’m pretty sure those neighbours and I would have difficulty seeing eye to eye about things. Ahem. Life in a small town. It’s wonderful. Here’s to walls. YAAAAAAAAY. WAAAAAAAAAAALL.
A grand, a magnificent wall.
Hellcritters and I took a fast sprint to a local(ish) garden centre this afternoon. The point about taking critters along, aside from giving them a change of scenery, is that they FILL UP THE BACK SEAT so there’s a limit to the damage I can do.** Also we went late, so I didn’t have a lot of time to look around before the shop closed. I needed compost: my little all-the-plumbing-in-Hampshire garden is putting Westland’s frelling shareholders’ children through university, I buy so much frelling compost for all my pots. And while I was there I was going to look for snapdragons.*** Which means going into the plant area. Noooooooo . . .
I did very well. I bought three trays of snapdragons . . . rather too many little diascias† because they come in such good colours, a few pulsatillas†† which is another of those can’t-kill plants that keep dying on me, a pansy or two, a couple of hanging-basket liners and . . . a King Edward flowering currant.††† Which will grow seven or eight foot before it’s done. Arrrgh. It’s just . . . well, I have no self-control.‡ And we had a flowering currant at the old house which I loved, and it’s been on my list of Things to Replace for . . . eight years. And it called my name, okay? How are you supposed to walk away from something that knows your name?‡‡
And I got home and realised I should have bought more compost.
* * *
*Which is to say before Souvenir de la Malmaison went in. Generally speaking you worry about your plants when someone is stomping over their beds and digging ditches through their roots and filling those ditches up with cement and so on.^ In Souvenir’s case you worry about anyone loose in her vicinity, however well defended with spades and scaffolding.
^ I would be very sorry to lose Golden Spires+ and Brother Cadfael++ but at least I could replace them. I’m holding my breath about my apple tree. Not only is it some kind of old—I’ve been here eight years and it was already stooped and wrinkly when I arrived—but I have no idea what sort it is, so I couldn’t replace it, and it produces fantastic apples. It’s leafing out now. So far so good.
++ http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=1157
** Actually there isn’t. This wretched garden centre delivers locally.
*** Individual colour snapdragons. Major pet peeve: mixed trays of bedding plants so you have no idea what you’re getting till they flower. So you plant a mixed tray of snapdragons/busy lizzies/begonias/bedding dahlias/whatever under your old-fashioned lavender-pink roses and they come out scarlet and orange. THANKS EVER SO.
†† http://www.bluebellcottage.co.uk/plants/PUL100-Pulsatilla-vulgaris-Pasque-flower
††† http://apps.rhs.org.uk/plantselector/plant?plantid=5242
‡ However I flatter myself I’m not a complete fool. http://www.manufactum.co.uk/terracotta-tile-clematis-root-protector-p1443402/
What. The. Frell. I’m supposed to spend twenty-three quid on a broken pot? I have DOZENS of broken pots sitting around waiting to be recreated as further-broken-up bits in the bottoms of other pots.^ If I wanted to do it that way I could erect an Eiffel Tower of terra cotta pieces. Furthermore, what a waste of opportunity: most of my clematis have clusters of littler pots of things like geraniums and pinks protecting their roots from sunlight. When there is sunlight, of course. Feh. Oh, and burying terra cotta in the ground? That is so doomed. ‘Frost resistant’. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
^ I know, they’ve proved it at least annually for the last several decades that shards in the bottoms of pots do not improve drainage. Well, yes and no. They do prevent the drainage holes from getting blocked. They also weigh the pot down: most pots flare from the base. Tall thin pots do well to have a nice stabilising layer of stones or pottery pieces in the bottom. And when you’re potting on I’d much rather untangle overexuberant roots from loose shards than from impacted soil—plus you have a smaller rootball to transfer. I still put something in the bottoms of pots before I put the soil in.
‡‡ And there’s always Third House. Third House’s garden has several Largest _____ You’ve Ever Seen which began life with me at the cottage.
April 23, 2013
Sunlight etc
Today is the first really warm, shirtsleeve weather day we’ve had.* With, you know, blue sky and sunlight and the whole thing. It’s extremely confusing. You grope automatically for your woollies and then you stand there staring at them bewilderedly. You’re afraid to go outdoors with any fewer than six layers and a duvet-sized scarf. All that bright light is oppressive.**
I figured it out in time to spend most of the afternoon in the cottage garden.*** In my shirtsleeves. Although I didn’t get much gardening gardening done. Yes. Atlas was here on Monday AND I HAVE A GREENHOUSE AGAIN. Not a greenhouse the way Alicia has a greenhouse, BUT I HAVE A FUNCTIONING POTTING TABLE.† And I found my blood, fish and bone†† and a trowel I haven’t seen in years and a distressing amount of stuff I’m sure I never bought . . . and of course the greenhouse at present looks worse than it did when I started.
Tomorrow. . . .
* * *
* And the hellhounds aren’t eating.
Mangan_nina
Query – do you really feed your hellhounds 3 times a day? Suddenly worried that my more pups really ARE starving to death instead of lying through their pearly whites….
It would be more accurate to say that I offer them food three times a day. Whether or not they eat it is an appallingly, traumatically open question. But because of their querulous digestions, not eating tends to make them ill, so the more they don’t eat the more they won’t eat.^ They also find food threatening so offering it to them any time but normal known scheduled meal times will cause consternation, outrage and a knock-on refusal to eat during the next scheduled food-related situation. So having three presentation opportunities built into the system is to help me. We are in a very bad spell of not eating right now AND IT IS MAKING ME CRAAAAAAZY. The worst of it is that they were already well into no-food mode when the weather started having little stabs at springlikeness, and warm weather always gives them the appetite of a dead cockroach or a knitting needle, neither of which are noted trencherpersons. . . .
The hellterror eats more or less constantly. Of course she gets three meals because the hellhounds get three meals—even if she weren’t a trifle excitable about food I wouldn’t not feed one dog when the others are getting officially fed—but she also receives a casual half-handful of kibble or kibble equivalent pretty much every time she goes back into some crate or other. It means she goes but it also means she’s happy to go . . . and will solicit going-back-into-crateness if she feels she’s been out long enough and is getting hungry. Why she doesn’t weigh eleven stone I have no idea. All that hucklebutting I suppose.
Judith
Quote:
Although I have moved the hellterror crate off the table onto the floor … neither she nor I is totally happy with the new arrangement.
Think about a ramp. I have one of these:
http://dogramp.com/dogramp/
for my Suburban. Nice until the dogs grow up enough to be confident enough (and their bones are mature enough) to get in and out.
Snork. You are so not grasping the size of my kitchen. If I had a ramp in there, all the hellcritters and I would have to leave. Also I quite like having a kitchen table again. The problem is that Pav likes being high up. Including being carried.
Also . . . maybe you have to start them young? I would get a ramp for Wolfgang for when Darkness’ back is giving him gyp, but neither Darkness nor Chaos will use the old half-door Peter found for us to practise on. It’s perfectly stable, and wider than a real ramp would be. Nooooooo. And they turn into india-rubber dogs if I try to pick up one of them or a part of one of them and put it on the ramp.
Quote:
wriggly twenty-eight pound parcels
(*snort*) You have it so easy… Your karma demands that you fall in love with a giant breed puppy next…
How are giant breeds’ attitude toward FOOD? If you guarantee it WILL EAT . . . sure. I’m sure I need to be raising a giant-breed puppy when I’m eighty. I’m already thinking that if I’m blisteringly stupid enough to want more sighthounds again some day . . . I’m definitely going to adopt a greyhound, because when I go to the rescue place and fill out all the paperwork and get cross-examined about my suitability as a dog owner and then they ask me what I want I will say one that eats. It can have three legs and one eye and be nineteen years old and need a ramp to get into the car . . . if it eats I’m happy to give it a home.
Diane in MN
Pav will be thirteen months old and BEGINNING TO SHOW SOME SENSE. Er . . . right?
Well, hope springs eternal, but we generally figure puppies are puppies until they’re two.
Yes, that’s true of smaller dogs too. Whippets and whippet-based lurchers need two years before you want to think about making any assumptions. But they can BEGIN to show some sense before then. And Pav is slightly less manic than she was seven months ago. Slightly. The cottage kitchen is way too small for any kind of significant rioting, which has meant that the only way all three of them can be loose in it is when I’ve got Pav in a body lock. She is now capable of cruising for as much as ten minutes before anyone hits flashpoint.
Because of Alicia being here poor Pavlova was in her crate more than usual yesterday so HA HA HA HA I’M SO FUNNY as a special treat I let her help me garden for about half an hour this afternoon. But even as I was fishing her out of the compost bucket and preventing her from eating the roses^^ and discouraging her from helping me dig holes, I was thinking, this is still a lot better than it would have been even a month ago. I wouldn’t have tried a month ago, even if we’d had any weather that might have made me want to.
^ Sighthounds are famous for being bad eaters. There certainly are sighthounds that tuck in like . . . like, say, bull terriers.+ But believing food to be optional is a common sighthound trait.
+ And a fat sighthound is a sorry sight.
^^ She frelling targets roses. There can be half a dozen plants immediately at hellterror height and she goes for the roses.
** Vitamin D? Oh, I take pills.
*** I failed to inveigle Alicia into walking the Three Evil Sisters’ gauntlet yesterday. She barely came out into the garden at all and turned around and fled back indoors again at the earliest opportunity. Hmmph. Just because her garden is a marvel of neatness and organisation and advance planning and a functioning greenhouse is no reason to be haughty.
† Now my back will start to hurt, you know? It’s been remarkably patient with all the bending and squatting and kneeling.
†† http://www.interhort.com/products/tr_101011_fish_blood&&bone_25kgs.php
April 22, 2013
A few days in Venice – city of canals, guest post by Cathy R
I visited Venice for the first time in March, on a photography group holiday, and absolutely loved it!
Several hundred photos later, here are just a very few that I thought blog readers might like to see. This post is mainly water and canal based – appropriately enough, for a first post about Venice!
The Grand Canal – a truly magical waterway. And a very busy one.
This guy seems pretty nonchalant about it all.
Narrow, enticing side canals, often too narrow for powerboats.
Dozing in the late afternoon sun …
Most of the gondoliers were in these traditional stripey tops and hats.
Gondola detail.
The Rialto Bridge, with a bustling fruit and fish market on the right bank – more photos of which later.
Canalside buildings dating back to the 1300s. Often shabby, peeling and decaying, but utterly picturesque and romantic.
In a city of water, what better way to see it than from water level? We had a fantastic day kayaking. Paddling along the Grand Canal was utterly magical.
My little camera met its maker, unfortunately, shortly afterwards. I dropped it into the puddle of salty water on my spray deck (whilst trying to quickly get out of the way of an oncoming gondola and panicking in a most unbecoming manner!).
Fortunately our guide, Rene, had a waterproof camera and took loads of great shots of us both, this one included. Kayaks go where other boats can’t!
What a superb day.
Wow wow wow wow wow. –Ed.
April 21, 2013
Warm Sunday
It’s been another beautiful spring day . . . we’ve had an actual SPRING WEEKEND, what’s gone wrong?* The gods of anarchy must be off playing golf on Betelgeuse or something. I hurtled hellhounds over to Old Eden and there were lots of dazed, blinking people on the footpaths wondering what had hit them and like feeling the air for, I don’t know, incipient sleet or something. Nobody except official card-carrying Ramblers** actually carry maps any more—the dazed and blinking are all carrying their smartphones. Some things don’t change however: I was asked for directions three times*** by people staring bewilderedly at their smartphones, and my directions in each case began with some version of ‘first you turn around’.
* * *
* Alicia
My greenhouse is also full of small green things yearning to be outside in the ground. I keep telling them to wait a bit yet or they’ll get a nasty chill and then it would be tears before bedtime!
Also? Also? My greenhouse is full of buckets of sand and teetering pre-avalanches of all the stuff that used to be on shelves on the other wall which are not only a cataclysm waiting to happen in their own right but I can’t find anything that I know used to be there and I can’t REACH anything on the shelves behind which (theoretically) should be still more or less as they were before the Wall Trauma began. Not to mention the risk to life and unbroken limbs that negotiating passing through the greenhouse is at present. And furthermore I haven’t heard from Atlas. If he doesn’t come tomorrow and put my shelves back up I may move to an eighth-floor flat.^
But because I am smarting from the jolly description of your splendid greenhouse with its rows and rows of nurtured and pampered seedlings I will just mention in passing that I’ve been tying up the Three Evil Sisters and a short person could probably now walk down that path unmolested.^^ I do not lose gracefully. It behoves everyone to remember this.
^ And teach the hellcritters to use litter boxes.
Gwyn_sully
Argh, you are making me want to garden. Stop making me want to garden! My poor apartment has nowhere for plants to go!
Windowsills. Window boxes. You’re getting no sympathy from me. There’s a gizmo out there I almost bought a couple of years ago that was called something like Indoor Garden and it was a big tray thing with a grow-light built in over it so the whole deal was free-standing and you could put it anywhere you could plug it in. They were advertising it for short veg—lettuce and herbs, say—you could probably grow some prone tomatoes. Or you could just buy a grow-light and hang it over your kitchen/dining table.+ This option is no longer available to me because I have a hellterror (and only one table).++
Right outside my door gets pretty much no sunlight,
Begonias. Fuchsias. Camellias. Foxgloves. Ferns. Hostas. Heucheras. I could go on a long time, you know.
and all the usable garden space has been claimed by tenants who have been there longer than I. All I have managed is to wodge in a few pots for tomatoes in the front lawn, and I know one of my neighbors at least is quite resentful of them.
Offer him/her a tomato?
+ There may be fancy (read: expensive) grow-lights out there but the ones in my price range have to hang close to what they’re shining on. Hence a table. This also prevents you from walking on your seedlings and constantly clanging into the wretched grow-light. The winter I had mine in the sitting-room at the cottage I had bruises. Okay, more bruises than usual.
++ Although I have moved the hellterror crate off the table# onto the floor . . . neither she nor I is totally happy with the new arrangement. Her view isn’t nearly as good down there, and it’s a small dark kitchen anyway—and she is still Mayhem on four little furry feet so she has to spend any time I can’t keep an eye on her in her crate. When the Winter Table comes down## I’m going to try shoving the hellhounds’ crate around a little and see if there is any alternative. I have already blocked off two cupboards in my small kitchen by the fact of having the first frelling critter crate. Siiiiiiigh.
Also . . . when I had her on the table, she used to BURST out the door and fly into my arms, oof. And . . . she misses being carried. Especially in the mornings when we haven’t SEEN EACH OTHER FOR AT LEAST SIX HOURS. She’d launch herself out of the floor-level crate and immediately start scrabbling up my leg and crying. So now I get down on the floor when I open the crate in the morning, she bounds gladly into my arms . . . AND THEN I HAVE TO STAND UP CARRYING A FRELLING HEAVY HELLTERROR. She’s very happy. She hooks her front paws over my forearms, licks my face, and beats my ribs with her tail. It’s interesting about tails. The hellhounds’ tails are long and whippy and they sting if they whack you. The hellterror’s tail is short and muscular and it’s like being thumped with a truncheon.
But you only have critters at all if you’re demented, so superfluous carriage of wriggly twenty-eight pound parcels is all in the day’s adventures.###
# I didn’t do it sooner because I WAS WAITING FOR SPRING. She’s only a puppy, she’s not large, there’s only one of her and there are DRAFTS down there.
## Which is apparently not going to be any time soon. I had everything and its best friend indoors again last night . . . and I believe we are going to repeat this delightful cotillion tonight. ARRRRRRGH. When my [tender] dahlia cuttings arrive I am so dead. ~
~ I always order way too many dahlia cuttings. Even years I’m being pretty good about plant orders . . . I order too many dahlia cuttings.
### Feh etc.
^^ Alicia is not short. But she’s shorter than I am.
** http://www.ramblers.org.uk/
Yes, I am, because they lobby for stuff like keeping footpaths open, but I’ve never been on a group walk. I’m thinking about it now however because I think the hellterror would enjoy it, as the hellhounds would not.
*** Person walking dogs is usually a good bet for local pedestrian directions, by the time I open my mouth and my American accent falls out it’s too late, and before they start edging away I’m usually already giving them quite decent (local pedestrian) directions. It’s when they say things like ‘London’ or ‘the Taj Mahal’ that I have to stop and think about it first.
April 20, 2013
KES, 75
SEVENTY FIVE
There was a little pause, while he debated what to tell me. Serena liked me but I was still an outlander. So was Serena, of course, but she’d been here fifteen years. I hadn’t been here fifteen days yet. I was good for fifteen hours though.
“Sheila Lanchester is sensitive,” he said. He debated a little more. “Like she maybe hasn’t quite got the word that she has to share this planet with other people.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Things like the sound of a car starting upset her,” he went on. “And some people, you know, actually bang their car doors harder than they have to. I know. It’s hard to believe. But she swears it’s true. I know someone, in fact, that she accused of banging a door just to upset her.”
“Amazing,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I take it she comes to your garage,” I said.
“Not any more,” he said, and grinned. “You owe me, right?”
“I sure do,” I said fervently.
“Yeah. Either you carry a lot of anvils around with you or you read as much as Serena.” He looked at the book box at his feet (and its four hundred and thirty-six kindred stacked over the floor in here and the parlour). “Well, I’m gonna follow you out, when you take your van back to New Iceland. And I want you to promise to drive real slow past the Lanchesters’ house. She’ll be looking out the window because she’ll hear your engine. I want her to see your van.”
“Okay,” I said. “And you’re going to arrange for the personal protection I’m going to need after my sensitive neighbour sees the Van of the Apocalypse leaving and the Pick Up That Ate Brooklyn coming back?” This wasn’t helping my whimwhams about my first night in my new house any.
“Sure,” he said, grinning again. “I can do that.”
“And Sid —” I began.
“She’ll scream, first time she sees Sid,” said Mike. “Just warning you.”
“Oh, great,” I said. “I had less trouble with my neighbors when I lived in an apartment building with three hundred other people.”
“You only get Ryuu’s muffins if you live around here,” said Mike. “Think about it.”
“Okay, I’m thinking about it,” I said, visions of one of Joe’s minions arriving at the door with a gooey-hot pizza fading in comparison. “Hey, do you want me to roll the window down enough for Sid to stick her head out as we drive by? We’ll have to stop at the end of the road for me to roll it back up again but I’d like to get as much of the screaming as possible over with in one go.”
“It might give you a head start, but she’ll have to scream the second time too, because she’ll have had time to think about it and, you know, get more worked up.”
“This is the real reason they haven’t been able to rent Rose Manor before, right?” I said. “Neighbor from hell?” Who needs a madwoman in the attic?
“Nah. They’re really never here. Dunno why they’re here now. Maybe, they see your van and your dog, they’ll go away faster.”
“We live in hope,” I said. “I was coming to ask if you’d like a cup of tea and a sandwich.”
“That’d be great,” he said. He looked down at the van. It looked surprisingly harmless from here. “We need to hit the road before it, you know, gets too dark for your neighbor to see anything. But we’re nearly done.”
“You’re nearly done,” I said, leading the way to the kitchen. “Anything I have is yours for the asking, which at the moment is pretty much ham. And bread. And mustard. I seem to have left the butter back at the motel. There’s also high-quality dog food which I’m sure Sid would not mind sharing. And a few of Ryuu’s muffins, speaking of Ryuu’s muffins.”
“You’re on the secret take-out list already, are you? That was fast.”
“That was Sid,” I said. “Bridget is a dog person.”
“Bridget is almost as mental as my dad. When her kids were little and she was home all the time she kept adopting dogs.”
I made two ham sandwiches—it’s rude to let your guest eat by himself—while Mike wandered around the kitchen. He kept wandering as he ate his. After all that box-carrying you’d’ve thought he’d want to sit down. Maybe he didn’t like the look of the chairs any more than I did. I was half wondering if I could remember which box the pillows were in so we could both sit down and half wondering if he might know where I could get a cheap replacement stove for the thing that was listlessly attempting to boil water for more tea—when he caught sight of Caedmon.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “That’s a Guardian. I never heard that Rose Manor had a Guardian. Man, those are like the best solid-fuel stoves ever made. They’ll just about fix a flat tire and walk your dog for you.”
April 19, 2013
Spring Gardening, continued
Having the ME come roaring back in the wake of the flu is perversely proving to be rather good for my poor neglected garden—because I’ve essentially cancelled everything and am staying home and . . . sitting around is not my best thing even when I feel fairly deathlike I’M NOT DEAD YET so in this shockingly spring like weather with the SUNLIGHT and all the accoutrements like gentle breezes and bumblebees, I’ve been going outdoors and poking things with a trowel. Although this is the time of year that I usually do try to make an effort to establish some kind of . . . well, let’s not get carried away and call it order, but some kind of rough beating back of the jungle* outdoors, while I’ve got last autumn’s disgraceful plant over-orders relentlessly arriving in the post in instalments what feels like every day.** But spring is also when, as you clear off/out the AMAZING amounts of rubbish you haven’t dealt with since . . . oh, August or so***, you get to see what’s alive† and what isn’t . . . as well as look for where the doodah you’re going to PUT all the stuff arriving in the post. ††
Two more boxes of plants in the post today, one of them petunias, siiiiiigh . . . we’re supposed to have more frelling frost over the weekend. My sweet peas, having rejoiced at finally getting outdoors and off the Winter Table over the hellhound crate in the kitchen, are now starting to get cranky again: sweet peas don’t like their roots messed with and they’re starting to punch through the pressed whatever-it-is-not-peat plant pots that you plant as is, and the roots grow through it and the pot disintegrates (more or less). An old experienced (professional) gardener I often see out walking his dogs says plant ’em out now, they’ll be fine. Ummmmmm . . .
The second box . . . is wider than it is high. It is, however, vividly and generously labelled THIS WAY UP with helpful arrows on all four surfaces suitable for this direction. And when I opened it . . . the single plant within is lying on its side because it is TALLER than it is WIDE and this is the ONLY WAY this particular plant would FIT in this particular box. Said plant is a pitcher plant, so it is planted in what amounts to a small piece of marsh which of course has poured all over the bottom floor of the This Way Up box. ARRRRRRRRRRGH. Nursery mailroom FAIL.
I didn’t get the petunias potted on today which is maybe just as well if the touch of FROST TONIGHT††† is true since a small tray is easier to wedge indoors than a large tray‡ but I would have got all the new roses planted . . . if I hadn’t bought two more yesterday when I was buying a BIRTHDAY PRESENT for a FRIEND. Thus do thoughtful gestures screw you up and make extra work. ‡‡
PS: Staying at home is also good for my knitting.
* * *
* Souvenir de la Malmaison, I’m looking at you. Actually there’s a whole dangerous little gauntlet right there. Souvenir is the worst, but Little Rambler who is not little is rioting on the other side of the path and Agnes, who as a rugosa should probably be categorised as a dangerous weapon anyway, has eight-foot stems looking for trouble just beyond Little Rambler. Abandon Hope All Ye Who Are Dumb Enough to Try to Enter Here. I’ve also decided that I don’t mind the bleeding freely nearly as much as I mind having one of the three Evil Sisters grab me by the hair. BEHAVE OR I’LL PRUNE YOU.
** The mornings I’ve had a bad night and haven’t lumbered out of bed yet are inevitably the mornings when one of the new, young, timid or letter-rule-toeing pains in the ass postpersons can’t just leave the frelling box(es) but has to KNOCK ON THE DOOR AND GET ME TO ANSWER IT.
*** It’s very good for wildlife NOT to have a tidy garden. You’re supposed to leave all the brush and dead stuff standing, okay? I am very wildlife oriented.
† CLEMATIS FLAMMULA. YAAAAAAAAY. http://apps.rhs.org.uk/plantselector/plant?plantid=4415
She keeps dying on me. Now that this one has survived a winter I’m afraid to pot her on. . . .
†† Furthermore I have frelling Alicia visiting on Monday. I could have said no. I could at least not have offered her Third House to stay overnight in. Sadly I would quite like to see her. What’s the matter with me? She is not only a gardener with a proper functioning greenhouse^ but she’s lately done all kinds of extensive and exquisite remodelling on her house and . . . um . . . ^^
^ Continuing AAAAAAAAUGH on this subject. Although I hear a rumour that Atlas is over his flu so he can perhaps have shovelled out the worst Monday before she gets here. Not that even at its best my greenhouse could fairly be described as functioning.
^^ Note that Alicia reads the blog. Hi Alicia! ::waves::
††† We had a hailstorm yesterday which took out one of my baby cosmos and ripped off a few geranium stems—but they’ll regrow, and I think the cosmos is toast. WHO WANTS TO BE A GARDENER. Fool.
‡ Although the Winter Table, which exists to support the indoor jungle on chilly overnights, is presently covered with rose photos mostly cut out of old calendars . . . remember the new refrigerator? Remember that my Dwarf Appliances thrust themselves in an unsightly manner into the centre of the room? Well, the back of my new refrigerator needs decorating.
‡‡ Like offering friends with better control of their lives and environments a place to stay overnight.
April 18, 2013
Book rec: Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks
Love love love. I read it quite a while ago, but I’m disorganised, absent-minded slime, and it went into a pile of Things to Recommend and . . . um . . . got buried by some of my yarn stash.
Sigh.
Anyway. I am sitting here rereading it and remembering how good it is. I know zip about graphic novels, despite the efforts of various people—including our forum mod Black Bear—to get me started. I can’t even remember how I first tripped over mention of FRIENDS, but I do remember that I was intrigued enough that I managed to google myself to First Second’s web site http://www.firstsecondbooks.com/ . . . where they serialise some of their new list on line before it’s available in print. And there, a year and something ago, was FRIENDS WITH BOYS. As I recall at that point all of it was up—the system seems to be that they put up new panels of the current serials Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays—and I got about halfway through it before (a) my clicking finger got paralytic cramp and (b) I KNEW I HAD TO HAVE IT.*
It’s been out a while now, but you can still read the first twenty pages on line and get hooked: http://www.friendswithboys.com/ **
The little come-on says:
Being homeschooled and raised with three brothers had its problems, but Maggie’s life is about to get a lot more complicated as she faces her greatest trial yet – entering public school for the first time!***
Also there’s a ghost.
* * *
* I have complicated feelings about the free-online thing of stuff some of us need to earn our livings from. I asked Penguin to hang less of PEGASUS than they’d planned to . . . but then there is KES. And graphic-novel clueless dweeb that I am, I probably wouldn’t have taken a sight-unseen flyer on a graphic novel about a bunch of high schoolers—I am sixty years old and am mostly pretty frelling resistant to high schoolers^—however highly recommended. But getting to read as much of it as I wanted totally worked with me. I BOUGHT IT. Waiting for it to arrive was a ratbag, although to be preferred to fatal tendonitis.
^ Even if I did just write a book about a few of ’em
** Although if you find that you’re now jonesing for more Faith Erin Hicks while you’re waiting for your copy of FRIENDS to arrive, quite a lot of NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG is up right now: http://www.nothingcanpossiblygowrong.com/comic/page-001/ ^
^ Oh. Which seems to have a new page up every weekday. And the book is published next month, so put an Ace bandage on your clicking finger and get going.
*** I wish to state for the record that while I wrote the bulk of SHADOWS after I read FRIENDS WITH BOYS, my heroine’s name was already Maggie.^
^ Although Lucy may be my favourite character in FRIENDS. I’ve always liked the name Lucy too . . .
April 17, 2013
PROGRESS
Look! Look! LOOK!
And then, of course, it rains. It doesn’t necessarily rain enough to do the soil or your plants any good, it just rains enough to stop the Wall Man walling any further.
I hope he has an indoor job too. Bookbinding or something.
BUT I HAVE A BACK WALL TO MY GREENHOUSE AGAIN.
YAAAAAAAAAAY. And I am LONGING to get the greenhouse put back together. It’s not like it’s ever tidy but for example I’m planting roses and my bone meal [fertilizer] has disappeared. The greenhouse may not be tidy but I can find stuff.* And if I don’t get my potting table back soon I’m going to need a kidney belt.
But I need Atlas to put the shelf back up, re-line the wall that is shared with Theodora’s summerhouse, and heave the table back into place—at the moment it’s sitting next to/under Souvenir de la Malmaison, who is beginning to stir out of her winter sleep and will engulf the thing if it doesn’t get moved soon.**
So what happens? That selfish ratbag Atlas chose to get FLU this week. How thoughtless can a man be?
ALMOST. Almost, almost, almost FRELLING ALMOST.
Meanwhile, in another part of the forest. . . .
Speaking of pansies. And daffs.
Cottage front steps. And the daffs are Tete a tete and they smell. It’s like, you know, spring.
I feel a little carried away when there are REAL FLOWERS again after an unnecessarily long winter. I know, I know, in Vermont it’s STILL winter. But this is not Vermont. I don’t think.
Too cute or what. There’s this to be said for all the stupid cold weather: my crocuses have lasted amazingly.
And those adorable purple and orange pansies . . . spent the winter in the plastic trays I originally bought them in. Bad me. I fed them a couple of times–clearly–but only potted them up last week and they’ve all gone like WOW. Now, speaking of my bad luck with pansies, these are just common-or-garden variety garden centre pansies–and spent the winter in their shop trays. What are we betting that they’ll have taken over the front of the house by next year?
FRITILLARIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Trust me, this is as exciting as the wall.
In the stair picture, if you were standing on the left of the photo facing the house, the fritillaries are in a little mostly-empty planter (which will have a great throbbing dahlia in it later on if all goes well) to the right of the daffodils.
Speaking of even more pansies. I LOVE pansies. These are more of the ones that had a happy winter in their original shop trays.
Maybe I’ve got it all wrong about pansies. Maybe they like being neglected and left to cope in heinous conditions and all this careful soil mix and good drainage thing is inaccurate and misguided.
* * *
* Usually.
** She’s already practising for atrocities to come by making small dangerous snatches at me as I try to sneak past her.
April 16, 2013
Spring gardening
I’m still pretty haunted by yesterday’s news* but it’s been another mild spring day, remember those?, we used to have ’em, and I’ve been out in the garden for the second day in a row.** It completely baffles me why some things live and some die. Take pansies. I adore pansies and I can usually rely on getting one good season out of them . . . but my record on keeping them going is PATHETIC and only slowly improving. I’ve finally got a mat of those ‘wild’ pansies with big heart-shaped leaves and little toothy faces growing in a big pot in a corner whose main element has died, and I’m afraid to disturb the frelling pansies by putting something else in. It took me about three tries to get these things going—and they’re supposed to be tough as old boots and will grow and thrive anywhere. No. Wrong. This lot is dark pink which is, of course, excellent, but I’d have their pale-pink sisters too . . . but I think I’ve given up. Rebecca*** is a big favourite. I have four of her in a big pot. One of them is insanely hearty. One of them is not too bad. One of them is a weedy little thing. One of them is dead. WHY? IT’S THE SAME POT.
On the other hand my eremurus robustus† is still alive. WHY? They’re frelling tricky plants†† and I was out of my tiny mind to buy it in the first place—they’re also not cheap. I did try to plant it correctly but, eh, I can’t even get four of the same pansies in a pot to flourish simultaneously, why should a notorious ratbag do anything but croak at the earliest opportunity? It didn’t flower last year but it grew. And then it disappeared over the winter and I thought yup, right—and was thinking about putting a rose in that big pot††† when today . . . IT’S ALIVE. And I was absolutely thrilled to discover that my clematis Arctic Queen‡ IS STILL ALIVE. She has kept getting buried by the frelling gigantic Fantin Latour‡‡ which I moved up to Third House this winter, but Fantin wasn’t delighted with the experience and the ground she came out of got pretty torn up. I wasn’t expecting Arctic Queen to have survived. BUT SHE DID. So I fed her and put a copper ring around her to discourage slugs, which adore young clematis stems above almost anything but your lettuces and strawberries, and did a small not-ground-disturbing dance of joy on what passes for the path between the beds.
There are a few advantages to ghastly cold springs. The slug population is not what it should be in mid-April. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. But my real triumph, not that it has anything to do with me, it’s just the luck of circumstance: I haven’t seen a single horrid red disgusting lily beetle AND MY GARDEN IS FULL OF FRITILLARIES.‡‡‡ Pretty much for the first time ever, in the eight years I’ve been at the cottage. First I had to get them established—which in this case was not that difficult—and then the lily beetle scourge settled in. But apparently lily beetles don’t like the cold. Now that’s worth disturbing a little ground to dance for.
* * *
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/15/boston-marathon-explosion-finish-line
You know one of those three people who died was an eight-year-old boy who was there to watch his dad run? And that his mother and his six-year-old sister are ‘seriously’ injured, which probably means they had bits blown off. Imagine what it’s going to be like for that family now.
I was sitting sadly on my stool by the Aga this morning, which is where I usually do my first praying (as well as tea-drinking) of the day, and thinking about Boston, and feeling useless. Ask me in six months or ten years, but it seems to me that prayer comforts the pray-er partly because if you manage to make contact with the prayer-space (and it’s not a given that you’re going to, every time: sometimes all you can do is go through the motions—and I’ve been told this by people who’ve been doing it a long time, so it’s not just my inexperience) you know it’s all one, that the great mystical Oneness is true. Because you’re there. It’s like walking into a tree. Wham. Yup. Tree. Bark. Leaves. Feet in the dirt, head in the sky. You’re not going to argue about it. And your praying itself—my praying anyway—becomes less a doing something^ than a being there, another witnessing, I suppose, as you might sit by the bedside of someone who’s ill or hurt or dying, or walk the dog and pick up the post and bring cups of tea and not say useless things to someone who’s grieving. Which is a doing without doing, if you like. What you want is to be able to fix it, whatever it is. You can’t. But you can be there.
Still. Being there for hundreds of people you don’t know who are three thousand miles away feels like a fairly tall order. And then I remembered that St Margaret’s has a prayer chain. You can ask for stuff to be prayed for. So I rang Lotte and she wrote it down and then said, in the same gentle voice she’d used when she’d pointed out I’d be eligible to become a member of St Margaret’s if I wanted to, Would I like to become a member of the prayer chain myself?
Oh. Yeep. Yes. Yeep, but yes.
Well, that’s going to make me frelling focus. . . .
^ Although that’s another big plus for the pray-er. When you want to do something and there isn’t anything you can do, for whatever reason . . . yes there is. You can pray. And while I realise this in itself isn’t going to convert anybody this is a very great thing—as every member of every religion that includes prayer knows. Helplessness, uselessness is totally the worst.
** AND THERE IS PROGRESS ON THE WALL. I forgot to bring my frelling camera with me today when I went back to the cottage from the mews after lunch. Arrrrrrgh. But there WILL BE PHOTOS.
*** Who looks like this: http://www.perryhillnurseries.co.uk/Catalogue/Perennials/images/Resized_ViolaRebecca.jpg
† http://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/eremurus-robustus/1538.html
They’re big magnificent-looking things. But these look white which they aren’t. Here’s a close up that gives you a better idea of the colour:
http://www.rosecottageplants.co.uk/eremurus-robustus-agm/p3
†† If you read the gardenersworld.com description you’ll notice it says ‘skill level—experienced’. Chiefly I’m experienced in being ripped to shreds by roses^, and watching things die.
^ I was thinking again today, while bleeding freely, why do we DO it? Why do we grow frelling roses? Why is it WORTH THE PAIN? Dunno. But I wouldn’t be without them. I just scream a lot.
††† I seem to have more roses to find places for.
‡ http://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/clematis-arctic-queen/1632.html
‘Skill level experienced’? Piffle. Most clematis are easy. They like their feet in the shade and their heads in the sun, and you must not muck about with their roots, but beyond that if you keep them fed and watered they’ll do fine. We won’t, however, get into the, you should forgive the term, thorny question of pruning categories.
‡‡ http://www.classicroses.co.uk/products/roses/fantinlatour/
. . . Golly. Sorry about that. However the monster link seems to work. The point is that all the Fantins I’ve ever seen have been substantially bigger than what they tell you on the rose sites. Mine had easily six and a half foot stems . . . in several directions.
‡‡‡ http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardens/Rosemoor/About-Rosemoor/Plant-of-the-month/April/Fritillaria-meleagris Love love love. I have a few white ones too. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/07/plant-offer-snakes-head-fritillary
Robin McKinley's Blog
- Robin McKinley's profile
- 7222 followers
