The Truth Behind the Spider Plant

No wonder I'm having motivation problems at the moment. Look at my writing room. It's a mess! It has, I am ashamed to say, become a dumping ground. It has become an easy place to erect (no sniggering at the back, please) a clothes airer on which to dry our clothes now we have dispensed with the electricity guzzling tumble dryer. When someone calls to say 'I'm popping round in half an hour', it is a good place to fling the papers/magazines/books/ ironing/ sewing projects that I grab from surfaces in a whizz-bang attempt at cleaning up so I don't appear such a sloven. It is one of the down sides of working from home. I think people expect me to have a tidy house because I am on hand to tidy. 'What else could she possibly occupy her time with?' I reckon they are thinking. 'She's isn't doing a proper job, after all.'

Ergo, when I go to my writing room to write, to do my work, I can't get near my writing desk for the clutter. And I settle with my laptop in the kitchen which is full of distractions like cups of tea and biscuits and gazing out of the windows at chickens. And giving the fridge a clear out and maybe making a cake or two...

Following a thoroughly moochy Saturday evening, when my attempt to watch 'The Man Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain' was scuppered once more by the pleasant and unexpected arrival of a bleached-headed Chris on roller-blades (don't ask), I told myself very firmly to pull myself together. 'Tomorrow,' I said, as I lay in bed ready for sleep, with Tybalt flopped on my stomach, 'you are going to TIDY UP that room, and you are going to GET YOURSELF BACK ON TRACK and stop all this MOOCHY behaviour.'
'Excuse me,' said Tybalt, 'but could you shut up now? I am trying to sleep and your talking is making your tummy wobble up and down. It's like sleeping on an ocean liner.'

Up early this morning I march into the writing room armed with window cleaner, wax polish, hoover and various cloths and dusters. I roll up my sleeves. 'Right,' I say. 'No tea and hot cross bun until you've de-cluttered this room.'

There are two windows in my writing room. It is what is known in estate agent parlance as 'double aspect'. Both window ledges contain plants. All the plants are pot-bound and looking decidedly ill. I cart all the plants to the greenhouse in order to repot them and give them a new surge of life.

Now, I tend to prefer houseplants that are foliage based rather than ones with flowers. This is because things with flowers tend to die on me. So I gather around me a mixture of ferns, peace lilies and spider plants. One of them even has a name. It is a large fern called Terwilliger, because it looks like Side-Show Bob from The Simpsons. So I repot the plants and it is when I get to the spiderplant that I have a startling moment.

Why are spider plants called spider plants, do you think? Because their arch-like green leaves make them look like spiders? I think not. I've always thought this plant was mis-named. I'd call it something like a fountain plant or a weeping willow plant. Far more in keeping with the effect its foliage creates.

I'll tell you why they're called spider plants. It's because of their roots! They have big, thick, bulbously fat hairy roots that tangle themselves together like big, thick, bulbously fat hairy spider legs! They are HORRIBLE! My camera has run out of batteries otherwise I would have a put a photo in this post so you could judge for yourselves. This particular plant had divided itself into three. I had the devil's own job separating them because of these horrible, horrible roots. There was no 'gentle teasing apart' involved, as is the suggested method in all the gardening books when it comes to the repotting of house plants. More like vicious and violent wrenching. It was like wrestling with a giant squid.

Well, I stuffed the now three spider plants into new pots with new compost and gave them some water. I don't know if they'll survive this brutal treatment. But now I know what lies beneath the surface, I'm not sure I'm that bothered.

Back to my writing room. After two hours of cleaning and tidying, filing and ordering, it now looks like a proper work space. It feels calm and ordered. It feels like a proper place to write. It feels like a good place to have a cuppa and a hot cross bun and do a bit of reading.

And maybe some writing.

The 1950's Housewife

The sun is up, the air is springy and I've spent all morning getting rid of 'stuff ', either as rubbish, or as charity shop donations or for the elusive boot fayre I always promise myself I'll do if I can get over people launching themselves at me and saying 'Ow much, love?' in an aggressive manner. I've also checked the seed potatoes that are chitting in Heather's bedroom and I think maybe we've got too many. Again. I always go a bit wild in my seed potato guestimations. Can you have too many potatoes? Probably not.

I blame my early spring-cleaning frenzy on yesterday when Andy, distraught at having to return to work today and in the absence of having won the lottery/ discovered a wealthy benefactor/ been bequeathed a large sum of money by a rich relative we didn't know we had, decided to watch back-to-back episodes of the first series of 'River Cottage' starring our hero, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. It's a bit like me watching back-to-back episodes of 'The Darling Buds of May' and pretending I'm Ma Larkin.

'That's all we need,' said Andy, waving a hand at the TV screen which was showing pictures of Hugh's River Cottage set in rural Dorset next to a river with pigs, chickens and veg in the lush surroundings. 'I know,' I said, because I agree. 'But how are we going to get it?' said Andy. 'I don't know,' I admit, because I don't. I tend to send up requests to the Greater Universe about these things but Andy, being an atheist, doesn't hold with this approach and just wants some-one to recognise our potential as admirable small-holders and give us a big fat wodge of cash because they like us.

Andy disappears upstairs and launches an internet research frenzy, looking at property websites and shouting things like 'We could get a place in the Outer Hebrides quite cheap,' and 'How do you feel about living abroad?' (He knows full well my responses to both these suggestions but I admire his persistence in these matters. I suspect he is trying to catch me out, a bit like when he thought getting me a ballooning experience for my birthday would be a positive way forward to getting me into an airplane. Ha! You'll be lucky, dearest!)

I go out into the kitchen to stare at my lovely batch of marmalade and feel like a good and dutiful wife. I think 'We've got a load of 'stuff '. We don't need this 'stuff.' Tomorrow I am going to have a good clear out of 'stuff.'

And that's just what I've done. I've also given the hen house a good clean and mentioned to the girls that they might like to have a clear out of their 'stuff ', too.

'Why?' asks Miggo, suspiciously.
'Well, in case we find THE place to move to in the country,' I say. 'And we have to sell up and move quickly.'
'We're not going to the Outer Hebrides are we?' asks Mrs Pumphrey. 'Only I don't think I can cope with the snow and rain and a bitter north wind blowing around my harris.' (Mrs Pumphrey's harris, you may remember, is a little pink and bald at the mo due to Mrs Slocombe and her naughty feather stealing habit.)
'No,' I say. 'We are not going anywhere north of Liverpool if I can help it.'
'Or abroad,' says Mrs Poo. 'Unless it's Russia. I wouldn't mind moving to Russia. Is Stalin still in charge?'
'No he isn't,' I say. 'On account of his being dead. And it's as cold in Russia as it is in Scotland.'
'I can't go abroad, ' says Miggins. 'My passport has lapsed.'

I reassure the hens that my urge to get rid of 'stuff ' is merely a precautionary measure. Besides, I've got half a hundred weight of seed potatoes to get in the ground in the next month.