A week in the life

Wednesday

I am exhausted. Nikki the dogminder has gone to a Brandon Flowers concert at the Eden Project so I don’t get my day off. I nearly step on a fat brown grass snake on the path through the field. What does this mean? I should have connections with snakes - I am born in a Chinese year of the snake and my name may mean snake – but I haven’t found them yet. As I write this, I think ‘a snake in the grass’. ‘A lurking danger’ says the dictionary.

Thursday

Migraine. I wake in the night with delirious thoughts pumping through my brain like blood. I don’t have any control over them and they don’t feel like mine. The words ‘the Devil’s heart’ arrive and then ‘the Dragon’s heart’. I roll over and write them down on the scrap-paper I keep on my bedside table.

Friday

Feel less yukky but still weak. Nikki picks up Ellie. I plant out the last of my parsnips and cover them with chicken wire to protect them from the rabbits. Felicity the cat used to keep their numbers down, leaving a headless baby rabbit on my bedside rug most days through the summer. What will happen now she’s gone?

Saturday

I yield to temptation and stop off at Long Tall Sally on my way to the library in Exeter. I find a black and white African-print top that I think I can adapt to fit. It’s in the sale (and an extra 30 per cent off the sale price) so worth a try. Frog and I spend all evening unpicking it.

Sunday

Ellie disappears while we’re out walking. I hear distant barking so guess where she’s gone. As expected, she’s licking noses through a neighbours’ gate with their five-month-old Rhodesian ridgeback. I feel mean dragging her away but they did have a long play together on Wednesday while I drank tea with Claire.

Monday

I feel crushed as usual at the start of the week by the reality of life. But is it really reality or just someone else’s idea of what reality really is? Does it matter that I don’t have a job, don’t earn money, don’t know what to say when people ask me what I ‘do’?

Tuesday

I want to write a blog post about auras but I’ve been looking for my file of aura portraits for several months. Where has it gone?  I decide to write this one instead as it’s been brewing since the weekend. I censored it because I thought, are people really interested in the minutiae of my life? Wouldn’t it be better to write something serious and informative? I want to include my first attempt at a photographic self-portrait as well. But is that narcissistic?

Where are my feet? Where is the dog? I need more practice.
(The black bag in my hand contains dog-treats, not what you're thinking it does.)

I like Eggheads

Here is a silly poem I wrote a few years ago after Frog and I had been disagreeing about what to watch on television. (In case you don't watch television, 'Eggheads' and 'The Simpsons' are television programmes, one a quiz and the other a cartoon.)

I like Eggheads

And you like The Simpsons

I like chilli

And you like custard

I like Tolkien

And you like Pratchett

I like silence

And you like noise

I like giving things away

And you like collecting them

I like lists

And you like chasing a whim

I like taking my time

And you like pressure

I like mornings

And you like night

I like walks

And you like shopping

I like polo necks

And you like scarves

I like Handel

And you like Hendrix

I like water

And you like tea

And that is why, you see,

That I like you

And you like me.

Ellie and mayweed

A proper gardener

 

I had a migraine yesterday so was lying outside under a sun umbrella. When I turned over I saw this corner of the house.

    ‘That looks like something created by a proper gardener,’ I thought.

    At the back are tomato and cucumber plants donated by gardening friends. (Thank you, Alan. Thank you, Pat.)
    The ‘trellis’ is what Frog calls racking. He rescued it from the university (where he works) when they were refurbishing a lab and chucking it out.
    In the front are my new parsley plants and an olive tree bought by Frog.
    Also my brand new watering can which I actually bought myself - with a voucher that came in a free local paper. It sprinkles, unlike my old one which has had its spout nibbled by Dog. (The old one was given to me by my sister Emma many years ago. I still use it – just not for sprinkling.)

    This south-westerly wall is baking hot after a day of sunshine, with the bricks acting like a giant storage heater and keeping the plants warm all night. It works better than the southerly wall round the corner (where I have some chilli plants, also donated).

Thomas

I wrote this eight years ago about something that happened fifteen years ago. For the full story, see ‘Mother’s Day’ (April).

You weren’t very pretty

when you came out –

all wrinkled and red.

They dressed you in a bonnet and shawl

and  put you in a crib

then showed you to us both

even though you were dead.

Frog cried buckets

so I stayed brave.

Frog’s brave now

but I can’t cry any more.

I’m the one who’s dead,

while you sail on

and spring comes to Devon.

Wildflowers in the garden

Deep down Frog and I are the same, but on the surface we differ in just about everything.

    In the house for instance I am a minimalist whereas Frog’s possessions accrue in awful dusty heaps and spread like cancer.

    ‘I just take a long time to put things away,’ says Frog when I bark my shins yet again and swear.

    ‘Yes,’ I mutter darkly. ‘Like twenty years.’

    In the garden however, our roles are reversed. Frog has a collection of machines of destruction – chainsaw, mower, hedgetrimmers, strimmer – which he longs to use ‘to keep the garden tidy’. I on the other hand, so long as we have somewhere to sit out, I can grow some vegetables, and we can see our views, would rather leave it to nature.

    Mostly we manage to compromise, and here are some of the wildflowers that have escaped Frog’s flails, some self-seeded and some planted by me.

    I don’t want to get on my soapbox here, but why grow foreign plants which need cosseting and could be invasive (such as the dreaded Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed, Himalayan balsam and a pond weed whose name I’ve forgotten) when we have so many lovely native plants? Or am I being racist?

Hedge woundwort, which has seeded itself in the paving slabs next to some Greek oregano (which has itself spread from a flowerbed). What a lovely colour combination. I like this plant, even though it doesn’t smell pleasant, as it feels friendly. Another of the ‘worts’, used for staunching wounds, as you might expect. Its leaves yield a yellow dye, so one of my books says.

Bindweed, crawling all over the shrubs. I’m conducting an experiment: will it take over, or will it reach sensible proportions and then stop?

Tiny self-heal, in the lawn, used in the past for sore throats, headaches, chest ailments, internal bleeding, piles and fevers, to close wounds and as a general strengthener. Wow. Did it work? I’ve no idea.

Feverfew, which I think I planted once and which has now spread itself into the strangest places. Here it is in a dark corner of the carport. A herbalist once prescribed a tincture of feverfew for me to take when I had migraines but it didn’t work. I read somewhere that I should be eating a leaf a day as a preventative. I tried one once and it was disgusting.

Meadow cranesbill, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen in the wild. Presumably it’s one of those plants that used to grow with crops in fields but because of herbicides does no more. I sowed some in the garden and it lives very happily in the flowerbeds, spreading but not taking over.

Toadflax, also planted by me. It’s supposed to be a pest in gardens, but I’ve never found it so. I love the name. ‘Flax’ I can understand because of the shape of the leaves, but ‘toad’? I must check out my mother’s copy of Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica. Maybe that would tell me.

Comfrey, of course, beloved by organic gardeners, planted by me and now all over the place. Frog razed these clumps to the ground two weeks ago (me hurriedly gathering up the stuff and filling one and a half compost bins) and look at them now. As well as composting comfrey, I use it as a mulch on my veg bed. Does this work, do you know? Are the nutrients released this way?