Handstands in heaven

Today is the 20th anniversary of my mother’s death. To mark the occasion, we had a little party at the house where she spent most of her adult life. It went well (no knock-down drag-out rows, no court cases) and this morning there’ll be a Mass at St Columcille’s church in thanksgiving.

There’s a tinderbox of reasons why it took so long to get over her loss to our family, but thanksgiving will be given this morning for the fact that at long last we have. Most everyone believes their mother was the bestest in the whole world and when she died at 56 years of age, it was a catastrophe. For me, because she was an oak tree to my scutch grass, for her wider family and friends because she was so young, so vibrant, so lovely.

In preparing for the get together, I went through some old photographs that narrated her life in this house, the rented house she and my dad lived in before this was built, and found to my surprise a potted history of her favourite plants and successes.

There are few photos of the rented house in North Street they lived in till 1966, but two from 61 and 62 made me smile. The first depicted a small garden that was treated as a yard, with a shed, some building debris and very little lawn as a backdrop to my dad posing with a fine-looking greyhound. A year later the second picture shows the garden with grass, no rubble, a neat shed and a toddler. The greyhound mustn’t have delivered on the early promise. (Neither did the toddler mind you, but hey! 🙂 )

Back to the garden here and a lot of her planting has survived. The Boston Ivy along the north wall was what she settled on after a series of experiments with clematis. The laburnum she planted to echo the one in her own mother’s house got taken out when the gate got widened, so I’ve to find a spot for a new one. The climbing roses she planted beside the dining room window got taken out when the renovations were done in 2005, but were replaced with two new ones.

Her pride and joy, the Philadelphus or mock orange is thriving and still producing delicate fragrance every May. Her hydrangeas are my pride and joy and still provide the first blast of colour you see upon entering the garden, and muted colour in the dried blooms that keep the summer flag flying indoors throughout the winter.

Her aubretia pops up somewhere every summer, as does a small deep purple flower with almost black leaves, it returns with such vigour it’s almost ground cover for any spot that’s left alone for five minutes.

Indoors, I don’t have any of her spider plants or busy lizzies, but I’ve kept an asparagus fern on the go that’s moved with me wherever I went (and replaced liked Trigger’s sweeping brush, with tuftier, younger versions whenever the strings got too long, wan and matted).

I’m a whizz with parsley – yes, that’s the stuff that could probably grow on Mars with no help from a gardener – and have a regular selection of mints, coriander, thyme and rosemary that, like hers, gets used in the kitchen.

There’s a kerria now in the spot she used for sunbathing, and its burst of yellow pom-poms are just about to happen this year.

The guests at her party seemed pleased with the garden’s most recent incarnation (I’d to keep them out of the front garden, which is an unmitigated pig’s ear) and we had a happy afternoon reminiscing about her.

Years ago when she was fed up coaxing me to do something or other she wryly mentioned that she’d go out and do a handstand with joy when it got done. At one point during the party of her family and friends, I got a picture in my mind of her doing cartwheels and handstands in heaven.

A rose by any other name

I picked two roses recently. One was in a charming country lane near Santander in Northern Spain. The second was 10 minutes ago.

Both of the roses were stolen. You may have already concluded from reading this blog that I am a bit of an arse. Personally, I prefer the word ‘wagon’.

We have roses galore in our garden. Most of them have scrambled up above the tree-line and are a mixture of red and yellow on the same petal, which is pretty and cheerful to spot from the desk I have here in what is laughingly called The Zen Room. The Zen Room is the box room of the house, repurposed from a bedroom to be my ‘office’. Why it’s an ironic name for any office of mine is because I am a hopelessly disorganised person who somehow manages to turn blind eyes to all of the clutter that accumulates daily from any kind of purposeful activity.

You open a reference book, you’re supposed to put it back on its shelf (not I). You give up on the worthy stuff and and find the fabulous shade of black enamel for your nails, you’re supposed to put that back on its shelf downstairs in the utility room where your better half even affixed a shelf onto an unsuspecting wall so your cosmetics have somewhere to live. Not I.

Cut to the chase Áine, you swiped two roses that were not yours to pluck because you found they had the heady perfume you associate with beautiful old-fashioned roses. Ours are too high and the ones planted by the Tidy Towns Committee at the Well Road in Swords, though a wondrous white full bloom; have no discernible scent at all so you deigned to leave them in the public place where they belong.

There’s no point in showing you the picture of today’s stolen rose, because you won’t be able to smell it.

Ral’s vision of two-year-old me

There was a little girl who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead
And when she was good, she was very, very good
...and when she was bad...she was horrid

Ral was my mother’s mother. My mother was her eldest daughter as I am my mother’s eldest daughter

Woke up this morning feeling rubbish

Woke up miserable this morning. The equivalent of a bad hair day multiplied by a gazillion.

I’m fat and frumpy. That’s a mindset not really a criticism of my physicality and outlook. But today it felt like I am fat and frumpy. Now however thanks to a couple of hours of useful activity, the mindset is better.

this lovely blue is the colour of my pantaloons

I need lightweight, comfortable clothes for the summer. I have a box of somebody’s discarded, or preloved, as they say in positive parlance these days, preloved maternity wear. Fabulous Indian style pantaloons: baggy, baggy, baggy in the legs and as wide as the ocean around the waist.

Having already fallen in love with them for their colour and pretty patterns I know these trousers are a gift to me because all they need is for a band of elastic to inserted at the waistline and they won’t fall down.

BTW, I believe these garments were discarded by their previous owner because the waistband had a ribbon of bias-binding threaded through the hem at the waist but these ribbons were of poor quality and had frayed beyond use. It would drive a person insane trying to untangle the knot of frayed threads in the ribbon, especially if their bladder was urgently warning them to untie the poxy knots fast.

So it was time to unearth my mother’s sewing basket. Anyone who knows me, knows how close this thought is to the delusional. My mother was handy and could adapt garments at the drop of a hat, but I alas, am no domestic goddess.

But TG for little wins; Mammy’s sewing basket had two lots of elastic folded neatly under the tray of threads, needles and safety pins. I measured out the first piece of elastic and it wound comfortably around my waist. I marked where to cut the elastic with a purple marker which also happened to be in there instead of her marking chalk. I put a safety pin at one edge and threaded it through the waistband.

I asked my husband to thread the needle for me as I didn’t want to have a conniption about not being able to see the eye of the needle before I even started the sewing. I worked the safety pin all the way around and hand-sewed the elastic into a really strong bond. I repeated the exercise with the second pair of trousers.

Happy days! Maternity wear rocks. And I’m feeling at one with my mother. Thank God for little wins.

Crosspatch on gardening leave 🙂

Hello I’m Áine, I’m a novice blogger so please bear with me while I try to catch up with the rest of the world. In writing this self-description I feel a bit like those applicants for online romance except: I’ve already got as much romance as I can handle.

I can’t seem to grasp that blogging allows me the privilege of typing off-line and publishing whatever I can afford to share when I feel happy about it rather than having to panic and share my thoughts hopes and aspirations without the chance to think about it and decide calmly.

So I’m 60; cranky; short-fused; a bit of a wagon from time to time; and only like outdoor pursuits now that I’m obliged to do them for my continued health. I used to be a lounge lizard and I’m a reluctant outdoorsy person now.

I met somebody during the daytime about a month ago, who I only ever saw at night in a pub before and I was so shocked by the experience I whispered Nosferatu.

Apparently he’s been a daytime and nighttime person all along.

Anyway, until next week

All the best, Áine

Nil mo chuid gaeilge go h-íontach

But God loves a try-er: B’fhéidir go bhfuil daoine deas ag léamh an “post” sin agus deanann siad trocaire orm.

May Day ten years later

A decade later and I’m living with the after-effects of a stroke. I’m mobile, mostly healthy apart from an arthritic hip and very grateful that not much else has been lost to the stroke. I’ve just about found a routine that I can manage; a horticultural class on Monday; aqua-aerobics on Tuesday; housework on Wed; a lunchtime catch up with friends on Thursday and the weekend is totally mine.

I was prompted to renew this WordPress site by the bots at WordPress; so have re-started what I hope will be a daily exercise in getting to know the site and its benefits. First thing I’ve noticed is that it’s a tad more challenging to interact with the internet than it was and hopefully will become second nature to me from now on.

Hopefully for the first week I’ll get to explore quietly on my own and then perhaps when I’ve a better idea wha I want to use the site for, then I can learn how to share it with like-minded individuals. For now though, it’s simply good to be back, so thanks for the prompt WordPress. Nice one

Dibbling In Your Garden

Town & Country Gardening

4-hole-dibbleboard Build A Dibble Board
If your one of those that want and insist that every plant be perfectly spaced, ‘yea’ I’m talking mostly to all the square foot garden fanatics. Nothing against square foot gardens or even those that believe you ‘must’ have raised beds to grow a few vegetables. This little gadget may be just what you have been looking for.

Build A Dibble Board Check out ‘gardeninggrrl’ blog for a lot of pictures and building instructions.

Keep in mind you may need two or even three of every dibble board. Most garden seeds need to be planted 1/4 inch, 1/2 inch or 1 inch deep. Seed planted 1 inch deep that ‘should have been planted 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep may never break through the soil to see the light of day. In this event you have wasted your time, water and seed.

Grinning, My dibble board…

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W is for wisteria

The archway into the garden provides a structural focal point, but our actual wisteria plant is overgrown and needs a lot of hard pruning. July or August is the next recommended time according to the RHS and should give us more flowers next year.

V is for verbascum, verbena and violas

Violas and verbena have been tried here. Verbena’s like a tall, gnarly-stemed, lemon-scented herb with underwhelming purple flowers, and pansies are violas by another name. Get snippy you pedants while my eyes are on the prize of X, Y and Z and I will shout very loudly for five whole months. Actually, I have another sin, on top of impatience, to confess. This one didn’t actually get carried out, but the intention was there.

When the verbena here failed (got gobbled up by the box hedge bushes, red robin bushes, the cherry blossom, wisteria, jasmine, Oh! and the Boston Ivy and the Glasnevin Climbing Potato Plant that was bought in Limerick – can’t quite think of its name now, it was developed in Dublin’s Botanic Gardens so it’s called Glasnevin? – but, yes, we’re still saying the verbena failed not me). Anyway, I happened to notice that the county council had planted swathes of it in flowerbeds just outside the town, probably as part of the Tidy Towns effort. Knowing I could no more grow it from seed than I could have from my own plant, I planned a midnight heist, where I don balaclavas and dark clothing and with a dirty old shovel ‘acquire’ a few replacements. I’ve shelved those plans for now.

Another of the plants tried in that flower bed was Hollyhock. I’d forgotten that till I read the Fred Whitsey piece in the British Daily Telegraph about verbascum. Both he and one of his muses Vita Sackville West found these tall spires of color charming enough to promote their use outside of cottage gardens. It’s been a very long time now (at least five years) since I had to dig out the Hollyhock, so maybe it’s time to consider a verbascum instead.

Has anyone else noticed that I’m still using terminology that suggests I’m going to have time to be gardening at all during this summer?  I’m now committed to studying in Dublin Business School and doing Jobbridge exercises till September at least – so where the time to sort out the garden is going to materialize from God only knows….

U is for Urospermum

This plant is unmentionable. Its petals are said to look like Lion’s Teeth – dents de lion – but the sunny petals aren’t the problem. The tap roots are the bit that drive me crazy, they’re incredibly tenacious.  Oh! And I’m not too happy about those flying seeds either. Yes. My other name is killjoy.

However, you may like to pop over to horticulture guru’s Sheryl Normandeau’s blog for her take on the ubiquitous urospermum.