We are a long way from the sterile, plastic- lawned, dog toilet yard that we bought four years ago. Our planned urban jungle has leapt into action this year. A warm dry Spring has been followed by a very wet early summer. This is the corner that overlooks a semi-subterranean garage and is about 4 feet above the back lane behind so it has the feeling of a very substantial balcony.
Like all good balconies there is an element of privacy whilst observing others. There is very little visual observation of other humans except an occasional shadow of an unknown neighbour. Deliberately oversized in these pictures because the shadow represents all the shadowy figures who enliven our viewpoint.
Aural overlooking, overlistening if you like, is the thing. The back lane is a stone-walled corridor that links a small car park with the road that leads to the sea or the city. We can hear but not see the people walking up and down. Swimmers chat animatedly, dog walkers are quieter. Largish groups of Royal Marines who occasionally run down the lane have two distinct personalities. One is heavy and mildly worrisome when they are fully kitted up with guns and big boots. The other is more chattery and indeed fragrant as they do the same run in sports gear.
Evenings are quieter, couples and groups heading out to restaurants or the cinema.
But early mornings are my favourite thing. There is a sweet spot when all the singing birds are at their peak, just before the seagulls get up and move them all on.
In the pink, the view from the studio. We are exactly a year on from having trellis added to our garden wall to extend the height of our North and East facing yard walls. After that all our walls needed painting so we lost almost all of last year’s peak growing season for our new project of growing climbing plants. So this Spring has been a revelation. The climbers are climbing and mingling exactly as we hoped they would. Not completely hiding the neighborhood cats that promenade on the tops of our walls but almost, which leads to a quieter life dog-wise.
After a weekend of potting and preening all anyone needs to do now is bloom and grow. Lets see how that goes.
I don’t believe I have ever made a sacrifice in life.
I have, however,often given up something I valued for the sake of other considerations.
Surely that is just part of normal life and does not deserve the grandiose title of sacrifice.
This morning I got out of a comfy bed to let Hugo out for a wee. An entirely practical consideration in my opinion. I chose to do that.
I am wary of people who say they sacrificed something. The word is just all a bit too ‘drama queen’ for my liking.
But yesterday some light pruning occurred in our yard. Old blooms cut off to allow new blooms to flourish. That is about as sacrificial as it gets in our house. Anything else is a choice.
There has been way too much of this in our yard. Warm walls and gentle rain has brought out a parade of young snails on a Monday morning. My early morning cup of tea ,with birdsong, was somewhat ruined by watching dark snails of all sizes make their way up my crisp white walls.
Time to redirect the snail population off my white walls and into the snug, bijoux, terracotta paradise that is my composting system. Which means collecting them in a pot and moving them myself.
We have been growing climbers in our yard for about ten months.
Last year we missed the most dynamic part of the growing season so none of the climbers bloomed with anything more than the short lived flowers they arrived with. This year, the first where they have had almost a full year in our care they are all slow to get going. But first a climbing rose and now the Wisteria are putting out flowers. Just as the first rose bloomed its stalk became too weak and it was rescued to live a brief life in a shot glass. Yesterday the first wisteria bloom snapped off the plant and has been rescued into the kitchen, this time in a milk bottle.
A good excuse for some still life photography but hardly the Yarden of Eden we had imagined. The pollinators are not queuing up to buzz and pollen-up their bottoms any time soon in our yard. In contrast to our blooms the wooden bug hotel is terrifically successful brown, scurrying non-photographic things live a busy metropolitan life under and around our water butts. Worms live a happy terracotta life in our improvised composters, enjoying coffee grounds from around the world, tea bags and the occasional dog poo. If yardening were a sporting event our Mid-May results would look something like this.
Brown Things 6- 2 Pretty Things
The pretty things scoring a two because the roses have learned how to both bloom and hold their heads up.
Claire Austin rose and the sharp shadows of night in a city yard.
Not exactly an Easter Egg but as close as we got. Fueled by this Bagel we tackled big jobs in the Yard. Both had the potential to be grim jobs but neither were too bad either.
But first a recipe for Easter.
Not for the squeamish. But the results are just like regular compost.
We use two rhubarb forcing pots to recycle coffee grounds, teabags and dog poos that are done in the yard. If such a thing can be described as a recipe then the recipe has served us well for the eleven years we have had Hugo and nine years of Lola. The method worked on the clay soils of South London, the excellent soil of an old mortuary in Cornwall and now on slightly raised beds in a city yard. The pots never smell and we use the compost for flowers and shrubs.
The process couldn’t be simpler and the compost is excellent.
Ingredients
Coffee Grounds
Tea bags
Egg Shells
Dog poo picked up with bamboo fibre toilet paper.
A handful of juicy worms from a friend’s compost heap.
Method
Place rhubarb forcer on soil ( Lid optional)
Randomly layer the ingredients as available. Worms just once.
Empty from below in the Spring wearing gloves and with a hand fork.
Pick through the compost to remove stuff that has not been turned into compost. The biggest culprit seems to be tea bag fabric occasionally and friends who pick up their dogs poos with non compostable plastic bags.
I estimate that good compost is created in about a year with a three year cycle. Our pots seem to operate at about 2/3 full. We have two. When one is full to the brim we put the lid on and move to the other. The level drops surprisingly quickly.
In the Spring I harvest about 2/3 of each pot of compost from below and leave the top third to drop to the bottom when I stand the forcer back up. I always return a lot of worms to the top after I have done this.
We have moved house 3 times in 11 years there has never been a problem just bagging up and disposing of the small amounts of uncomposted matter at the top of the forcers.
Goodness knows why I felt the need to share this recipe. Except that we watched an Easter Special cookery programme that featured a ‘ What to do with left over Easter eggs’
Not in this house.
No programme ever features ‘ What to do with your left over dog shit’
The second job of the day was more tricksy, replacing a large plastic barrel home made ( not by us) water butt with an actual water butt provided by our water provider. First the full water butt had to be emptied and the water stored. Then there was butt wrestling to get the old one out and the new one in. And then refilling and landscaping of the new edition. All achieved before we went to a friends house for some Easter nattering.
It’s funny isn’t it, the conversations you have just as you leave these things that would have been so much more valuable at the beginning of the evening. We discovered the couple who left at the same time as us lived 1/2 a mile from us in Crystal Palace 8 years ago. Both relocating to the same patch of coast nearly 300 miles away. The funny thing is just a slight fleeting familiarity not associated with our current location. Conversations for another day…
What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to?
I am absolutely a risk-averse, risk taker. I would never plan a big risk but am happy to allow risk to happen. I believe that creativity absolutely grows in an environment of risk and that firmly held planning is the antithesis of a creative mind. My science, child rearing ,or health and safety head is a much less risk taking beast but even those worlds benefit sometimes from happy accidents.
To answer the question, I have no idea how big a risk I would like to take, maybe I already did it or maybe that choice is in the future.
On an illustrative note the photos accompanying this blog were taken in a friend/ bobbers/ neighbours garden. I have learned to my cost that taking a risk with planting in our yard does not work. What is needed is acute observation of what survives in close-by gardens as our locality is very much a micro climate. I spotted this rose while doing a tour of my friend’s garden.
Her yard is east-facing and mine is west but for a rose this beautiful in October I feel the risk is worth it.
One last little risk, throw the rose picture into a photo editing app that has a random algorithm and see what happens.
A classic ponder for a Friday. Covid has darkened our doors this week with 50% of the human household out of action sequentially. 100% in total. So not a huge amount of out and aboutage for us. I have chosen not to walk the dogs locally as it is impossible not to meet someone to talk to. I have not been alone, an autobiography of Adrian Edmondson and a biography of Alexander McQueen have kept me occupied. Both creative. interesting and somewhat troubled men at times. On a brighter note the David Austin Rose catalogue popped into my email, this is the inspiration for todays blog.
I chose a climbing rose for the yard and have ordered a bare root to be delivered in November. I chose it on sight and smell. The name in my opinion is rather ugly.
Unknown to me Crepuscule means sunset in French. Living in the west of England I have learned to love a good sunset. Where I grew up in the flat East of England sunsets were something that happened elsewhere.
Sunset over Plymouth Sound.
Just a little googling found an even uglier word for something quite so lovely.
Sunnansetlgong was the term for sunset in Old English while the word sunset meant West.
Both perfectly understandable. In looking this up I got the usual targeted online advert. My answer would be
Here we go October. The Solar festoon lights have been taken down from the yard. Poor attendance by daylight,recently, has powered them up only enough to limply glow for about an hour.
Here they are having their last glow on the floor, while they dry out, before they are boxed up until May. Taking them down was a much more difficult task than putting them up. The climbing plants had made good use of their wires as supports,
So I had a couple of hours of plant wrangling and weaving shoots into new support networks, while removing the festoon lights.
Many solar powered lights have been replaced by less mains operated bulbs. Just enough to light up the way to our garage.
The other set of lights will permit tomato harvesting in the dark evenings. Our outdoor tomato plants often keep fruiting until December. Careful storage means we can often eat a home grown tomato on C#ris##@s Day. Apologies for mentioning the C word.
In other news here is a photo that has all the components of a prize winning candid shot and is not a prize winning shot.
Moments before this shot the seagull slid down the small childrens slide. Here he is composing himself after his ‘thrill’ ride. He teased me by returning to the steps a few times but never quite plucked up the courage to give me a photo opportunity.
Leaves however have no choice. Nature imitating drive-through coffee.
Welcome October, play nicely and I will write good things.
When we took over this house and yard, a little under 3 years ago, there were a few projects that needed time, money and thought lavished on them.
The yard was an unloved space with no flower beds and lots of artificial grass. It was utilitarian and rather unloved. Nothing more than a dog toilet and the route to the garage for the previous owners. We immediately moved loads of pots and containers from our old garden to make it feel like home. Most survived. Perhaps the biggest revelation was that the artificial grass covered slightly raised beds and an old concrete patio. We have had to learn a lot with a yard rather than a garden. After the wettest winter on record a wet spring and now a wet summer we have been rather despairing of ever getting the yard how we wanted it. Perhaps most importantly we also had to learn what works in a stone and concrete box. Our natural aesthetic is Jungle and the yard prefers the Mediterranean vibe. For the last few days the sun has been out and suddenly we can see climbers climbing and a dense planting plan become dense.
The weather was even reliable enough to get the yard bean bags out, which was much appreciated.
Which brings me to a yardening hint. Linked to our yards previous life as a dog latrine.
We keep a couple of rhubarb forcers in an ornamental raised bed. Any emergency dog poos go into the rhubarb forcers in toilet paper along with teabags and coffee grounds. No rhubarb.This curious mix of foodstuffs feeds all sorts of creepy crawlies, slugs and snails. There is never a smell and the pots seem to regulate themselves to always being about half full.
We have used this method for all of the eleven years we have had Hugo, in three gardens. A clay soil in London and perfect soil in Cornwall. Each time we moved we lifted the pots to reveal perfect compost that could easily be dug into the ground. We probably stopped using them about two months before the move date. The only time there has been a problem is when a thoughtful visitor bagged up their dogs poo in compostable bags and then popped them in the pots. We discovered the error about three weeks later. That is not a day I care to dwell on, it was August!
So here we have it, a shit end to the first blog of the week.
Sharp Shadows on Shit.
P.S. I googled to see if a Mediterranean Jungle was a real thing. Sadly not, but just as there is such a thing as an Atlantic Rain Forest there is also a Mediteranean Rain Forest, both left over from when the earth was actually covered in Forests. Both under threat from Human activity.
We could never create a forest, but by accident we have created exactly what we have. A Mediteranean Rain Yard.
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