Flower Power

As soon as Andy was out the door to do his once-in-a-couple-of-months Saturday cover for work this morning, I was off into town to the Laura Ashley sale, in pursuit of my mission to cover the entire house in floral wallpaper.

So far, it is going quite well...

And I've chosen and purchased the paper for my arty-crafty writing room. It's a pale cream with little sprigs of pink roses on it, and it looks jolly nice. I have also discovered a new design covered in enormous red poppies, experiencing a moment of what I think is called 'love at first sight'. However, the poopies...poopies?? I mean poppies...would overpower the current room of decorating focus. It was with reluctance then, that I left the Laura Ashley poppy wallpaper in town.

But I'll be back...

I love flowers. I don't know why. But then what is there NOT to like about flowers? I remember as a small child being entranced by little blue flowers which were commonly known as 'cat's eyes', and little red flowers called 'scarlet Pimpernels'. I think they were both weed-type flowers but I loved them nonetheless.

And my grandad grew gladioli, and I was amazed that flowers could be so HUGE and colourful. My gran's front garden was crammed full of roses, and her back garden had a mass of flowers I adored which I now know to be lungwort or pulmonaria. We had a bright yellow laburnum tree in the front garden of the first house I ever lived in, and my abiding memory of that was that we were told NOT to eat it, as it was poisonous and we would DIE! Even if we touched it and licked our fingers! In the second house we lived in, there was a lilac tree on the drive and it's the first time I became aware that tree flowers could smell.

At our primary school there was a huge flowering cherry tree, beneath which us girls used to sit and fashion ourselves hair garlands from the fallen blossoms. And our local church had, and still has, a massive wisteria which was magical to walk beneath after Sunday school. It was like being in a house made of flowers in the summer and twisty, windy woven wood in the winter.

One of the best gardens I have visited is Anne Hathaway's cottage just outside Stratford-upon-Avon. When I imagine the house that will be our forever house, I always walk through a garden just like hers to get to the front door. The front door always has honeysuckle and roses growing around and over the porch and blankets of lavender beneath the windows.

I have to admit there are some flowers that leave me feeling a tad tepid. Cactus, for example. And red hot pokers. I don't understand either of those. Or lilies. But that could be because lilies are poisonous to cats and I love my cats.

In the front garden the bluebells are waiting to burst into flower. And a little violet has been flowering bravely by the front gate since the middle of December. When we moved here, there was a single violet; as the years have passed, it has spread and spread and it has become they and they are the most beautiful colour. Like the ones I used to find on my lone walks in the countryside as a child, when I'd find them in the high banks that lined the lanes, along with celandines and primroses.

Power to the flower - that's what I say!

Networking and Being Twelve

I have been out networking today. I decided it's no good waiting for things to happen on the job front, I have to make them happen by being out there, networking.

Now, when I mean networking I don't mean getting to the sea-side and flinging my shrimping equipment around with gay abandon. Oh no - although that would be a lovely occupation in today's rather summery weather. And I don't mean networking by being on the interwebbly and living life in 2-D through the medium of the electronic ether. What I mean is the casting of my confidence out into the ocean of life and seeing what I could pull back in or dredge up from my previous travels and travails.

And by networking today I have secured some adult education tutoring up until Christmas and two more contacts who now have me on their lists for more tutoring/ adult education/ course delivery in the future.

And I met up with lots of old colleagues who were really pleased to see me and I spent a good time catching up with gossip and drinking copious cups of tea. So I have achieved my objective of getting some lucrative part-time work which will still allow me to be a writer. Hurrah!!

Looking at my pedometer I have covered 15,826 steps in the last 7 hours. So I've done my exercise for today, too!

Yesterday was hair-do day. I went in long and grey and came out short and brunette.
'Do I look old enough to be a granny?' I said to the hairdresser.
'No,' he said.
'That was the correct answer!' I said. Job done!!

I thought, I'm going to buy a new top to go with my new hair and so I did. It is longish (I could just about get away with wearing it as a dress with my knee high boots), and has a flounce around the bottom. It is covered in purple and pink and blue flowers. And dotted with a sequin or two hither and thither. It is a Bohemian blousey, dressy thing and I skipped about town feeling about 12 years old.

And Andy came home bearing me a huge and lovely bouquet of flowers.

AND Strictly Come Dancing starts again tonight which always makes me and Andy feel like we should take up ballroom dancing.

Sometimes I get down about life. We all do. It's part of the rhythms of being human.

But I can also pick myself up again and move on.

And I have.

Cat's away, the mouse might play...or garden...

Yesterday, to save my Mum having to keep raising her eyebrows and 'tutting' about the huge pile of garden debris that is STILL on the front drive after umpteen weeks, I spent the afternoon cutting up said garden debris and shoving it into the sacks the bark chippings came in, ready to transport to the tip. I sustained many scratches, five splinters and a large blister on the middle finger of my right hand. I managed to get all of the splinters out bar one which, this morning, was red and producing bubbles of pus. I hope this won't result in my hand eventually turning green and dropping off, for that would be very inconvenient indeed.

And whilst I was out in the front garden I scrabbled about on my hands and knees on the driveway with a trowel clearing weeds and moss from the spaces between the paving bricks, and then I thought, 'I don't like that rhodedendron' over there so I set about it with the secateurs and created another pile of garden debris for Mum to 'tut' over. However, the death of the rhodedendron left a nice space in the corner of the front garden. What can I put there, I thought. It looks about the right size for a...

...BEE-HIVE!

I stood back and looked at the front garden with new eyes. My enthusiasm for bee-keeping has waned recently, mostly I think because I keep e-mailing the Bee-Keepers Association asking for information about courses and meetings and impressing on them how keen I am to have a go at keeping bees, but they have so far ignored my interest. However, I have discovered the existence of a bee-farm on the Isle of Sheppey and, if the web-site is anything to go by, it will be well worth a visit and chat. And my interest might well be re-invigorated.

So, I was thinking, cordon off that area for bee hive using willow trellis (I am very keen on willow trellis at the moment), make circular beds across the lawn between the new willow and the magnolia. Fill circular beds with bee flowers (of which there are many in the greenhouse). Put new gravel in space under window and cover with large containers filled with more flowers, tall ones, that will disguise the presence of a bee-hive.

A picture of a re-vamped front garden materialised in my mind.

And Andy is going to be away from home for 4 days to attend the BSAVA Conference in Birmingham. Leaving me with the car. Alone. With bee garden fever.

Now I don't want to alarm Andy. And come tomorrow, it might be snowing and I'll have gone off the idea of playing at being Charlie Dimmock and hide indoors for 4 days writing novel number three and eating chocolate chip shortbread and liver. (Not together I hasten to add - but Andy won't eat liver and I love it, and there's a bag of it in the freezer just waiting for the opportunity when the only person I have to feed is myself.) In fact, the most that might happen could be a few strategically placed canes and bits of string to mark out my ideas and a trip to the Isle of Sheppey.

All I'm saying, Andy, is you should brace yourself for your return on Sunday. Just in case.

Red-bee, stead-bee....GO!

It's a sunny day in England, a warmth is in the sky,
The garden's looking raddled, then so again am I.
It's time to plant some flowers, for bees to make their honey,
So this corner of our homestead will be forever sunny.

And so I don my wellies, and head to the back door
I come back in coz I forgot my gloves, and leave mud on the kitchen floor...

Oh stop! For heaven's sake, Denise, give your poor reader a rest will you? You're not a poet and you really should know it.

So anyway, I drag Andy to the garden centre so I can forge ahead with the plans for the bee garden. Yesterday, after attempting to write a tiger story and failing abysmally as I suddenly realised the story I was writing had actually been written before (remember 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea?' I thought it sounded familiar), I immersed myself in gardening books and magazines and planned out the plants for Bee Garden Project 2009. I am thrilled to find that most of the bee-friendly flowers are ones that have been favourites all my life. Good, old-fashioned cottage garden plants like my grandparents grew in their gardens.

We return with ten bags of multi-purpose compost, half a dozen foxgloves, half a dozen lavenders and a five foot high pussy-willow tree which is currently standing in the hall like an ostentatious coat-stand. After looking at other ready-made plants I decided to grow my other choices from seed so I got a packet each of antirrhinum,verbena, penstemon, scabious, poppy, browallia, forget-me-not, aquilegia, aster, cornflower, hollyhock and lupin. I especially like the antirrhinums because they are called 'Chuckles.' I refused to buy the candytuft because I think the garden centre had got their labelling wrong. What they were trying to sell as candytuft wasn't the plant I remembered from my childhood. But I suppose I may have been wrong, I was only six at the time...

All I need to do now is sow the seeds in the green-house and dig up the front garden whilst I'm waiting for them to grow big enough to plant out. Oh yes, and clean out the greenhouse after the chickens have been using it all winter as a shelter/ hen spa.

And then there's the question of the bees themselves. I've read a couple of books and seen a bee-keeping demonstration at our county fair. And I've tracked down an experienced bee-keeper who does individual bee-keeping lessons using his own set of organic hives. But where can I locate a hive without upsetting the neighbours? I spent some time this morning staring out of our landing window at the flat roof of the extension. 'Hmmm,' I thought, 'we could keep a hive out there.' It's sheltered and catches a good dose of sun in the mornings to encourage the little buzzers to get out of bed. I would have to access it via a ladder from the outside as the landing window is too tiny for me to squeeze through. Well, I might be able to squeeze through but I'm not prepared to try and end up getting stuck like Pooh Bear in Rabbit's burrow. (Although the honey analogy would be approriate). And the roof edge has built-up ridges of about 18 inches that I would need to negotiate (and bear in mind this would have to be performed whilst wearing full martian bee outfit and carrying a smoker and several sharp tools). I'm guessing the roof would be strong enough to bear the combined weight of a hive and me. Or a hive and me stamping around in a panic if the bees have a funny moment whilst I'm tending them.

The back garden isn't an option, being hen domain. Having established that Mrs Slocombe has mental health issues I wouldn't put it past her to have a go at eating bees or at least try knocking on the hive door in order to try and sell them Avon products (her latest money-making venture - she's decided she wants to save up for a caravan and she's seen a funky new model from Germany called a Tab that she's taken a shine to).

Maybe I could screen off an area of the front garden? What do you think?The neighbours would never know if I employed low animal cunning and discretion i.e building the hive and screen at two in the morning and saying 'Bees? What bees?'. They wouldn't notice the comings and goings of 10,000 buzzy insects, would they?

Nah...I bet I could get away with it. I'm very tempted to have a try.

The Bee Friendly Garden and the Mystery of the Extra Egg

Firstly, because I've just been to see the chickens with their daily apple ration (it's good for their teeth) I need to share with you that they appear to have lain 5 eggs between them today. Yes, five. Four hens = five eggs. Not quite sure how that works. When I put them to bed last night at 6 p.m, there were no eggs in the nest box. This morning when I took them tea and crumpets at 6.30 there were two eggs, and now, at lunchtime, to my surprise I've collected three more. So in less than 18 hours they've made 5 eggs!! Looking at the colours of the shells I think Mrs Pumphrey may be today's cor blimey champion chicken. Or possibly Mrs Slocombe. Phew! Or maybe there has been a visit from a stray hen. Or a phantom hen. Perhaps Mrs Bennett has returned and popped out one from beyond the grave. A ghost egg. There's a story in there somewhere....

Anyway, bees and flowers. We've got the hens, we've got the allotment and the next logical step is keeping bees. Andy has persuaded me that the neighbours won't like us any more if we get pigs. The pigs, he says, will have to wait until we get our small holding/farm/field. So it's back to bees.

We had an idea (Plan A) to dig up both front and back gardens chez nous and put down some more veg beds. But the more I think about this idea, the more dubious I feel about the practicalities. For one, all the local cats will think toilet heaven has arrived. And I don't trust the local kids not to hop over the wall and indulge in a spot of mindless vandalism (I wouldn't mind if they pinched a few carrots in order to eat them, but what are the chances of that being their motive??). Plus, the front garden is north-west facing so doesn't get a huge amount of warmth and sunlight. So I'm working on Plan Bee.

Plan Bee is to make a bee friendly garden. This is important because we need bees and bees are struggling at the moment and need all the help they can get. After much lobbying by the bee-keeping community, the Government have at last agreed to increase funding into research into bee diseases but until progress can be made into what caused so many swarms to be wiped out last year, we all need to do what we can to encourage bees into our gardens and ensure they continue to thrive to pollinate our fruit and veg.

So, I'm removing all the old shrubs from the front garden that we inherited from the previous owner and I'm going to replace them with plants that will benefit bees. Pretty plants, plants with glorious scents that make you bury your nose in their petals and take a deep sniff and 'WATCH OUT FOR THE BEE!'

I did make a start on the border last autumn, when a morning of light pruning turned into a whole day of Indiana Jones-type undergrowth decimation. But I need to get to grips with the old rose bushes that are way past their best and the roots of shrubs that, judging by the bit of experimental tugging I tried, have their roots encased in concrete. And I'll leave the magnolia bush that Andy bought me as a gift a couple of years ago(and it is a bush, Andy, NOT a tree. It won't get any bigger than it is. I know you're disappointed about this, but if you want a tree, you have to read the label and buy a tree and not a bush!), and the shrub under which is buried Tybalt's sister, Lilith, who died last year. But everything else is going.

My son, Chris, who works in a garden centre and knows a bit about gardening, popped in to visit this morning. I said, 'How would you go about getting rid of all those rose bushes and shrub roots?' I thought, cunningly, 'If I'm lucky, he'll say, 'It's okay Mum, I'll pop round next week on my week off and dig them out for you.' Unfortunately, taking a subtle hint is not one of his strong points so all I got was a detailed lecture on what chemicals to use and when to use them. Ah well, at least Heather will get a laugh when she reads this and marvels at my naiive optimism!

I'm also wondering if we can squeeze a polytunnel in the back garden. I run the idea by Mrs Miggins.
'Oooh yes,' she says. 'It'd be like having the Eden Project on our doorstep.'
'If you fill it with sand and a paddling pool, it'll be like Saint Tropez,' adds Mrs Slocombe and, as I look at her more closely, it does seem as if she has pecked her feathers into the shape of a chicken bikini.
'I was thinking about using it for tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers,' I say. 'You won't be allowed in, I'm afraid, not after what you've done to the lawn.'
'In that case, I think it's a very poor idea,' says Miggins. 'How about a jacuzzi instead?'