Catching Up
Shall I let you in on a secret? There is a very useful tool on these WordPress dashboards. It is a function that allows you to write a string of blog posts, save them, and set WordPress to post them at a date of your choosing.
I have been toying with the idea of using this, of settling down one Sunday afternoon and taking care of a month’s writing in one sitting, for some time now. It would certainly be convenient and spare you the frustration of seeing stale pages for days on end but, somehow, to the small percentage of perfectionist in me, being so efficient feels like cheating. And surely you would know.
Wouldn’t you?
No. We Hamblys are made of sterner stuff and from now on I resolve to be more regular in my posting. “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well,” our Grandpa Fred always used to say.
It does fall on me to add, however, that I have thought of you often this past month while I have been holed up, working in-house on someone else’s Mac, and unable to do my usual amount of blogging.
My head has been ticking over with all sorts of things, though. This is some of what’s been on my mind:
A pretty, patterned blouse and cashmere jumper that I bought from Traid recently in the name of research for this. I have also popped up here and, golly, even here.
The roses. Oh! The roses. I know every gardener has their own take on pruning but I suspect I have been a little too enthusiastic with the lopper-thingys too late in the season. If ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ does put in an appearance this summer, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Butter biscuits and whether it’s appropriate to use a recently acquired reindeer biscuit cutter in April. What do you think? At last count – last week – I had 19 different cutters and I haven’t bought a single one of them. I think my friends are hinting.
Rare-breed chickens and whether they would survive Brixton’s pitbulls and foxes, not to mention my landlords. Probably not.
Whether spring will ever arrive properly.
Treacle, the Newfoundland dog, who is giving my fella a run for his money. ‘Look,’ said Fella the other day. ‘I don’t say I don’t do this but I bet Treacle makes awful smells in bed.’
The picture of the daffodils was taken inside Blythburgh church, Suffolk, last weekend.
Peter’s Friends
‘So, um, how long do you think you’ll spend in the shop?’ a chap with a clipboard and a questionnaire at Petersham Nurseries just outside Richmond asked us on Saturday. My fella and I paused for a second or two before answering simultaneously:
‘Five minutes.’
‘About half an hour.’
No prizes for guessing who said what. We had planned a long, muddy walk through Richmond Park but I’m afraid one of my weaknesses is that it’s almost impossible to pass a good nursery by – and Petersham was no exception. So instead of heading up Richmond Hill immediately, we ambled down it, strolled along the river for a little while and then nosed our way through an alley before arriving at one of the smartest garden centres in London.
The last time I was there was a little less than a year ago. I’d visited on my own and was happy to wander between plants and benches, and admire the carefully chosen garden accessories inside one of two large glasshouses. At the time it reminded me a little of Saint Verde, a South African shop started by trend consultant Neville Trickett. Perhaps Trickett and the owners of Petersham are friends. Perhaps they just visit the same design shows.
This visit, however, was less satisfying and I found the whole tasteful affair rather too contrived. There were designer Wellington boots and designer allotment accessories, designer cloches and pots and aprons as well as countless numbers of heirloom seeds which are, understandably perhaps, de rigueur these days. I realised that I’m certainly not Petersham Nurseries’ intended customer, having grown up in a family that has turned ‘make do and mend’ into a belief system.
Our moment of departure came when a well-to-do customer huffed and puffed about being ignored by a poor shop assistant. My fella looked at me, exasperated by the imperious tone. ‘Shall we go?’ he suggested, his voice carrying a note of pleading that I’ve not heard before.
Outside and back among the plants we stopped to admire another tasteful, weatherbeaten bench.
‘See that!’ he said, pointing to the price tag with righteous indignation. ‘A thousand pounds for a bench. A thousand pounds!’
‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘Could probably find the same kind of thing at the Battersea car-boot market.’
We left, quickly, before the security guards and the man with the clipboard came to hustle us out, and made for the quiet of the park instead.
Pondering our visit on the train home, I began to feel that the Petershams and the car-boot markets of the world each have their place, and one would certainly be poorer without the other. I mean, if we couldn’t be inspired to scrounge a similar old bench from an auction or market, we’d never be able to say, ‘Ha! Got it for twenty quid: just stripped it, replaced the seat and backrest, fixed and balanced the legs – there were two missing, you know – repainted and finished it. Bargain, I tell you!’
If you are thinking of paying Petersham Nurseries a visit, note that Ursula Buchan will be promoting her new book Back to the Garden there on April 24. I’ve been dipping this collection of newspaper columns during the past few weeks and have found her quite enjoyable.
leave a comment