Notes from the week

It's been a quiet one around these parts. We’ve been going through a sad time, and it's sapped all my creative energy away. I haven't felt I've had much I wanted to talk about in the newsletter for a month or so, but the last few days I've felt that tiny spark coming back. I love my hobbies for their stoic patience. I can ignore them for months, sometimes years, and know they'll be waiting for me when I'm ready to return.

I was combing through photos from the past few weeks, wondering if I had anything worth putting in a newsletter. It surprised me to see there have been little pockets of joy here and there, more than I was expecting to be honest.

I finished this little border, beside the new patio. It was just a mound of irregular bare soil, with old holly roots, large rocks and weeds. I edged it with 4x4 posts, to match the rest of the raised beds, then back filled with a mix of compost and top soil. I’ve been finishing off beds with mulched bark, to help with moisture retention and suppress weeds. I like how neat and tidy it looks, and it keeps bare soil off the dogs’ paws, which helps keep the house clean. Once the plants grow in, you won’t be able to see the bark, and it will slowly decompose, adding nutrients to the dry soil. I can definitely see the benefits to top-dressing borders with compost and mulch, this is something I’m going to try to do at the end of every growing season from now on, when the plants are dying back. It also helps stop the dogs eating the compost (eye roll). I’ve just bought a set of eyelets and wire, to train that jasmine up the fence. My hope is that when you sit on the bench beside the border, you’ll be able to smell the jasmine.

If you’re interested in the patio project, you can read about it below:

New DIY skill unlocked!

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Jul 6

Thanks so much for all your lovely supportive comments on my last post. It seems like that feeling of overwhelm is pretty common, and I’m glad my writing resonated with so many of you. I appreciate everyone who takes time to leave a comment, even if sometimes I don’t respond. I read and value them all!

The woodland border, one of my best established borders, is looking lovely. Things were getting a bit out of hand, starting to flop and consume each other, so I got in there with some canes, stakes and plant supports. An hour of tidying and cutting back, and the result looks much more intentional. Last year I didn’t manage to do this, and lots of plants swamped each other and died. Definitely time well spent.

A niche topic for the gardeners amongst us, but I am delighted with my compost progress! I bought a paper shredder last year, one able to cope with cardboard, and have been dutifully shredding cardboard I scavenge from the recycle bins at work. Mixing these shreddies through the greens seems to be working really nicely to produce compost. This isn’t fully decomposed yet, it’s from this growing season, but it’s well on the way. I’ve been digging it out to mix into raised beds and add to borders. This is a big improvement on last year’s compost, which was full of large clumps of undigested cardboard or fermenting smelly mats of grass clippings (the dogs love to chew these - second eye roll).

Continuing the garden theme, my beans appear to be doing well, I harvested my first one today. I want to try to recreate a bean side dish I had in first class on the LNER train travelling from Kings Cross to Inverness a couple of years ago. It was peas and beans in a mint herb butter sauce and it was so good - crunchy and flavourful. Looking on the LNER website they don’t appear to do it any more but I reckon I can find something similar via YouTube. I’ve been harvesting strawberries, blueberries, and figs. Not a huge amount of any of them, but given it’s only my second season with a garden I’m pleased to get something. Next year I’ll be building a cage to keep the birds off the fruit!

The first photo in this newsletter is of the bees I share with a work pal. After a few weeks of missing bee checks, I got back into it last week and it was a really nice mindful hour, working my way through the hives. I’m not sure we’re on track to get any honey, but it’s just a pleasure to be with them.

I made some jam, using strawberries, red currants and rhubarb I’ve been collecting in the freezer. It tastes amazing, but sadly hasn’t really set. That’s two batches of jam that have essentially stayed as a syrup, I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing wrong. I’ve been looking up methods to salvage this batch, but they all involve pouring the jam back into a saucepan, adding more pectin and reboiling it. I’m not sure I have the energy just now, so I might just eat it as a syrup on porridge or yoghurt.

Lastly, we finally got around to building an oak table for my craft room. My original plan had been to have a plywood work bench across the full width of the room, but Andrew pointed out that this table, built originally by my Grandad from oak from Wimbledon Town Hall back in the 1990s, was sitting in pieces in the garage unused. I had thought to use it as a garage work bench, but this always felt like it was doing this piece a disservice, given how beautiful the wood is, and the associated family history. It was our dining room table when I was growing up, but was always a little bit too high for comfort. I remember sitting at it as a child, with the table basically at my armpit height. Mum & Dad have long since replaced it, but given it was made by my Grandad, they couldn’t get rid of it. When we bought our house and finally had space for furniture like this, they very kindly drove it up the length of the country to bring it to me.

It was a really lovely family activity, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, to build it together. Just me, Andrew and the dogs pottering in and out, slowly bringing a piece of my Grandad’s creative history back into daily use. I’m currently sitting at it to write this newsletter, the first of many to come from this space.