Catching Up
Apologies for the silence over the past couple of weeks. I’ve been rather out of the loop recently with deadlines and such, followed by a few days on holiday in Ireland. I came back right into the Chelsea Flower Show press day on Monday.
While I process all that to deliver to you in some kind of digestible form, I’ll leave you with a short made by journalism students at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. It’s about some women selling pineapples on the side of the road in the Eastern Cape, one of South Africa’s poorest provinces.
The film is a little off the regular feel-good beat of this blog, to be sure, but it’s rather good and certainly puts into perspective the neatly packaged chunks of tropical fruit seen in British supermarkets.
To put the women’s earnings into context, the current exchange rate is around 12 rand to one pound. The women are speaking Xhosa.
Aloe, Aloe
A little late with this perhaps but welcome if you’ve come here from my post on the Guardian gardening blog.
If you haven’t read the post but would like to debate the merits of native/indigenous gardening both in Britain and South Africa, you can join the fun here.
The picture of the quiver tree (Aloe dichotoma) was taken at the South African garden currently on display outside the British Museum. As I’ve said in the Guardian bit, it was a little strange seeing South African plants against a backdrop of cabs, buses and the ornate architecture of the Museum itself.
The garden is, however, part of theme: last year plants from the Indian subcontinent were featured in what appears to be a regular collaboration between Kew and the Museum. You can read more about their efforts here.
For the Birds
It was the prospect of hearing a unique, polyphonic, surround-sound musical that did it.
In a rash moment I can’t actually remember now, I agreed to get up and listen to the dawn chorus in nearby Dulwich Wood last weekend but, if you have ever risen early for this, you’ll know that Listening to the Dawn Chorus is an example of something that is Easier Said Than Done. That is, if you don’t have a three-month-old child, are an insomniac, or, er, a dairy farmer.
The issue with the dawn chorus is that it begins at least an hour before dawn, which is a problem for me those who suffer a degree of separation anxiety when parted from their beds for too long. So the 4am start last weekend wasn’t without its challenges. In fact the morning’s preliminaries went something like this:
V: Groan. What’s the time?
Fella: [Chirpily] Six thirty!
V: [Looks at clock] It’s fourteen minutes past four!
Since this rude awakening, I have discovered that in The Wonderful Weekend Book, Elspeth Thompson suggested that the hardest part of hearing the dawn chorus is getting up – or staying up all night, perhaps – at an unreasonable hour. It’s gratifying to know she had the same problem.
Fortunately Dulwich Wood – an exquisite, gloriously unpubliscised spot of London I’m almost loath to tell you about – was within walking distance and it wasn’t long before we were in the depths of a near iridescent wonderland, whispering and creeping about as if we were participating in a wildlife documentary.
But amid the green and to our delight we heard wrens – supposed to have taken a knock this year in the absence of winter food - blackbirds, blackcaps, robins and song thrushes. We also stalked a tawny owl for a bit, although I’m sure the joke was on us for that one.
Moving through the wood, it was interesting to pass through various territories and hear the according variances in song. I’ve read that at this time of year birdsong is crucial for establishing this territory – and for attracting a mate. In avian terms, it’s kind of now or never. Knowing that, you can almost hear the desperation in the males’ voices.
I’d hoped to be able to post a recording of the birdsong, with free breathing, footfall and aeroplane noise thrown in, but that hasn’t been possible, unfortunately. A picture of some lime tree leaves will have to suffice.
The RSPB has some useful information on the topic and suggests that birdsong carries up to twenty times further in the early morning, when the air is still and background noise reduced. Reason enough, perhaps, to consider getting out of bed before dawn again. Ha, ha.
Plants in Print
Am so enjoying the work of botanical printmaker Angie Lewin, whose output seems to be popping up everywhere right now – in galleries like Bankside, as well as places like Petersham Nurseries and the Garden Museum, where it appears on delightful greeting cards.
Angie lives in Norfolk and says her work is “inspired by both the clifftops and saltmarshes of the North Norfolk coast and the Scottish Highlands”.
“Still lives often incorporate seedpods, grasses, flints and dried seaweed collected on walking and sketching trips,” she says.
Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? BBC Homes and Antiques recently dubbed her work part of the ‘the new botanics’. Quite right. It’s so refreshing to see things like teasels and poppy seedheads portrayed in a contemporary way, when garden art so often falls into the staid.
Keep off the Grass
The lengths I go to, dear reader, to keep you in pretty pictures are nothing short of extraordinary. See this picture? See the those tulips? Nearly cost me 400 pounds.
I suppose I asked for it. There I was, merrily snapping away in one of the city parks yesterday evening, when a thick-set man came and stood solidly behind me. He coughed.
‘You’re on the grass,’ he said.
‘Am I?’ I asked, looking up and then around me. ‘Oh dear, I’d better get off then.’
I’ll admit I feigned ignorance about not being allowed on the grass because in actual fact I was standing right next to a sign instructing one to remove one’s person from said lawn, and you would have to be blind not to see it. Not even pretending to be Afrikaans-speaking would have worked because a) my Afrikaans is dreadful and b) Keep off the Grass looks the same in almost every language that cares about these things, and Afrikaans, you have to admit, has in the past been pretty good at telling people where they can and cannot stand.
Nope, I’d just chosen to ignore the sign, which isn’t fair or proper considering council gardeners work awfully hard at patching up gardens after dozens of people like me have traipsed through them. So perhaps what came next was karmic justice.
I’d snapped and snapped, even lain on a tarmac path with my head just on the lawn to take a picture of some forget-me-nots, when another thick-set man alerted me to the approaching closing time.
As I folded up my tripod and packed away my camera, he looked at me for a bit, took a breath and said, ‘Do you have a permit for this?’
Oh, the power these men wield. Of course I didn’t have a permit. A permit to take pictures of flowers in a park through which all and sundry pass every minute of every working day?
‘No,’ I said, looking at my shoes, which was about the point to which my heart had sunk.
‘There’s a fine of 400 pounds for that, you know, taking pictures without a permit. It’s more with a tripod. And are you a professional?’
‘No,’ I half lied, suddenly awfully glad I don’t have ads on this blog and that I earn more money off writing than photographs.
‘Oh. It’s more if you’re a professional.’
Sighing, and swallowing a small, anxious lump that had rather inconveniently materialised in my throat, I explained that if he charged me 400 pounds for something that wasn’t pointed out on the entrance board, I probably wouldn’t be able to pay him because there just isn’t a spare 400 pounds floating around right now.
Suddenly he changed his tune.
‘Mmmm. See that building? That lot are always taking pictures in this garden. Books, you know. And our parks and grounds people might need some pictures.
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Come back on Friday afternoon and ask for me. I can’t promise anything but come and put your ‘ead in.’
Later, when I huffed and puffed about nanny states and curious groundsmen to my fella, I found no sympathy. Instead, he laughed like a drain.
‘Seriously? Come back on Friday after he’s just let you off a big fine? That’s the best pick-up line I’ve ever heard.’
Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice
When you have spent almost an entire sunny weekend day indoors, there is nothing like popping outside and being confronted by a sea of hobbling marathon runners to make you feel like a total slug – especially if the only constructive thing you have done all Sunday is make Lemon Drizzle Cake.
Lemon Drizzle Cake? Well, it began with a homemade recipe book I bought last week at the Open Garden I mentioned in my previous post. I love homemade recipe books, especially when they are called things like Other People’s Cakes, as this one is. That said, I must admit that the recipes in this one do sound a little suggestive – Granny Meg’s Fruit Cake with Ginger, for instance, or Nellie’s Gateau au Chocolat. I’ll stop before I blush.
What got me onto making cakes this weekend was a miserable packet of malted biscuits I’d bought, earlier in the week, in the hope that they’d fill a little tea time gap. My, was I disappointed: they tasted of precisely nothing, the reason for which became abundantly clear as soon as I read the ingredients list (which I ought to have done in the first place). It was palm oil and corn syrup, rather than butter and sugar, that were sinking their way to my hips. What a shameful waste of calories.
This does, however, bring me to two blogs I’ve wanted to tell you about for some time. The first is Wandering Gaia, belonging to science and nature writer Gaia Vince,who has the kind of career I’d love were I more intrepid and better at figures. Previously an editor at Nature and then New Scientist, she’s travelling the world looking at how climate change is affecting those most vulnerable to it. She’s already visited Indonesia, where natural forest is being cleared to accommodate our palm oil habit.
The second is from über blogger and ladies’ man James Alexander Sinclair, usually of Blogging from Blackpitts, who has begun (ok, a while ago now) with some mates a blog all about biscuits. Unsurprisingly, it’s called Encounters with Remarkable Biscuits. I’d recommend a nice cup of tea and a happy hour dipping into it.
The picture is of some blossom, which I’m beginning to think is all rather too ephemeral for my good mental health. You spend months anticipating the stuff, it arrives and, before you know it, it’s over, gathering in papery drifts on the pavement. That sounds like a lot of things, actually – a slice of Lemon Drizzle Cake being one. I’d post a picture, only it’s all gone.
Thank God for Spring Sunshine and Magnolias
Walking along Half Moon Lane in Herne Hill this afternoon to see an Open Garden (beautiful; full of hellebores, forget-me-nots, wallflowers and daffodils), I recognised the sense of relief and well-being I felt last year, when I took these photos of some magnolias in Kew Gardens. See? So pleased was I to be in some sunshine after what I thought was a long, dreary winter that I pointed my camera directly at the sun to make sure it was real.
The date on these pics is March 15, which marks this spring out to be nearly a month later than last year, although, to be fair, some magnolias have already been out for a week or two. Having grown up with almost perpetual warmth and sunshine, this winter has felt like an eternity.
But before I get het up on dates and figures and what we think plants and sunshine ought to be doing at certain times of year, read this lovely piece from A Single Swallow, by Horatio Clare:
Like birds, we take our cues from seasons, from the phases of the moon and the movements of the sun. But we have formalised our calculations into a rigid but invisible web of grids, of time and space, which theoretically tell us when and where we are. The problem is that though there are many repeating mathematical patterns in nature and cosmology, the rhythms of the earth fluctuate outside the calculations we have designed to contain it…We talk of early springs and late summers as though the seasons were somehow out of joint, while it would perhaps be more logical to consider that it is our neat calendar of hours, days and weeks, with their chain of ‘seasonal’ festivals that is inaccurate.
(I’ve just spent about twenty minutes trying to find that piece which I read last night at about 1am, noted and then neglected to mark on the page. It’s on page 280, if you’re interested.)
He has a point, hasn’t he? Clare refers chiefly to swallows and their migration, which he follows through Africa from Cape Town to rural Wales, but I think it has bearing on plants, too.
Still, it doesn’t diminish my pleasure at having just cause to walk bare legged, wear sunglasses and drink ginger beer in the middle of the afternoon once more.
PS Being close to the flight path to Heathrow, I’m so enjoying the peace and quiet of not having the drone of aeroplane engines overhead at all times of day and night. That said, besides those travellers who really do have places to be, I can’t help feeling for fruit, cut-flower and vegetable farmers whose livelihoods are held ransom by a volcano on the other side of the world – and by what some would say is an untenable economic system, the vulnerability of which is now laid bare. The Guardian has an interesting piece on the subject here
Pimp your Pavement
Have you been into a Poundland lately?
Before you choke and splutter on your tea, I’ll say that it’s a brilliant place for buying random necessities like toothpaste, knee highs and deodorant for a fraction of the price you would pay in supermarkets or chemists.
Surprisingly Poundland, well, in Brixton at least, also has a fair selection of seeds, bulbs and even bedding plants, which at, er, a pound a bag makes them a bargain. With spring in the air and pollen in my nose, I’ve recently spent more than a few minutes looking at the brightly coloured varieties and wondering what to do with them.
The sad truth is that they’ve remained on shelf, for the garden that I share with its owners is simply too refined, too sedate, to suffer a garrulous band of newcomers from the wrong side of the tracks. So, how do I rescue said plants from a life of halogen lighting without causing horticultural disharmony and – if you’ll excuse a pun on that cliche – a riot of colour?
Queue Richard Reynolds, the enterprising man behind guerillagardening.org and his new project – and one after my own heart – called Pimp Your Pavement.
Heard of it yet? It’s encouraging us, or everyone within sight of pavement at least, to plant up its empty spaces, tree pits especially, with flowers and shrubs, and the Pimp Your Pavement website gives good hints and tips to help you get your own section of pavement looking more cheerful.
In the past, Richard has tackled some quite large projects, notably the neglected municipal areas close to his flat but, for the average person, taking on that kind of thing can be rather daunting, and without tremendous commitment it is almost bound to fail. The last time I tried guerilla gardening, in Durban some years ago, a little Felicia amelloides I planted and hoped would spread was repeatedly mown down by a municipal tractor driver merely doing his job.
The small dead space beneath the tree outside my front door, however, is rather more manageable and less likely to receive any attention at all, save the odd bit of fertilizing urine from one Brixton’s many dogs. Time to head back to Poundland.
She’s Here!
What I loved about this spring day (yes, she’s here, spring is finally here):
Putting bed linen out on the line to dry for the first time since, er, October, and leaving the sun and wind do their work.
Making lemon cupcakes with two twelve-year-olds and realising that it doesn’t matter if the icing isn’t perfectly smooth, or that the sponge didn’t rise as much as it ought to have done. Together, butter, sugar and flour will taste good no matter what you do to them.
This year’s first tulips.
At the end of the day, a man leaning out of a top floor window and having a fag.
Hearing a delivery man wish a customer well with her pregnancy.
The deep-plum leaves of a prunus against a sage-green wall.
To the west, the sun setting over a hundred chimney tops, which made me think of this:
Suffolk Seaside
There are certainly more exciting places in the world to visit than Suffolk’s villages, but then one doesn’t generally associate places with names like Walberswick, Saxmundham and Yoxford with bright lights and dancing girls, anyway.
That’s not to say you wouldn’t find dancing girls in the district. It’s just that, well, in that part of the world, the odds are best placed on you attempting to stumble home by the bright light of the North Star after a heady night with Peronelle’s Blush – a local cider laced with a shot of blackberry liqueur.
By day the quirky fishing villages along the coastal strip from Aldeburgh to Southwold are redolent of an older England, where, it seems, no ill could happen.
‘That’s a myth,’ I was told. ‘That England has never existed.’
Well, I expect that’s true but it didn’t stop me filling up a couple of memory cards – what an apt term – with pictures.
One morning, on a beach near Dunwich, we met some fishermen, one of whom had noticed the flash of a herring in the shallows and had caught the fish with his hands. It gulped and gasped for air while he held it.
‘Would you like it?’ he asked in a Suffolk burr. ‘It’ll need gutting.’ It felt like a test; a challenge for an out-of-towner fretting about a suffocating fish.
‘Ok. If you bash it on the head,’ I answered, remembering vaguely that I had gutted the one and only fish – a trout – that I have caught on a fly.
He took a pebble to its skull and wrapped it in a bag for me to take home. Rigor mortis had set in by the time we got in and in the end I didn’t gut it. It was baked whole and given to Treacle dog instead, which seemed a bit like wasting a life.
The fishermen said the cod have been slow this year.
This boat, pulled up on Aldeburgh beach next to a tumbledown shed advertising potted crab, hasn’t been out in a long time.
And some seaside pioneers, hardy things growing where nothing else will. Any idea what they are?
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