My garden in April

It’s been quite a while since I shared a garden post here, and I’m really not sure why. I’ve been taking photos most months - as you’d expect December and January were a bit sparse - but somehow they’ve not made it onto here. So I’m restarting these online memory scrapbook of my garden with snaps taken during April, and over the next few weeks I’ll catch myself up, so don’t be surprised to see a spot of snow in the not too distant future.

But first blossom.

Both of our cherry trees are full of blossom, which can when blown have a snow effect. We don’t have the pink cherry blossom that everyone craves, and goes wild for, like Greenwich Park but white blossom is good by me. Our laurel tree has also flowered this month, and between this and the cherries the pigeons are having a blast.

The laurel needs a cut though, as I’ve noticed that when it rains only part of the stone circle which is close-but-not-that-close-by gets wet. In fact a few of our trees need a cut so we’ll need to call our tree cutters, it’s been a while.

Throughout the garden there’s pops of lime green euphorbias, it’s a colour that really lifts the space especially on the grey-er days. It seems hard to believe that last April we were already making use of the barbecue, not so much - or at all - this year.

Our reddy-pink camellia has finally flowered, it’s much later than our neighbours, as usual but even so, it’s been slow. Now that it’s here, it’s very welcome and very beautiful but I wish it wasn’t quite so reticent. In more exciting news at the far end of the garden, our newest camellia has flowered. I say new, it arrived in 2015 and has flowered before, but this year it seems to have really got the hang of it.

And like many camellias even when it’s fading, it’s still as beautiful. Our ornamental quince, with its orange flowers, is doing well with more flowers than I remember from previous years. Last year we really cut back the euonymus and I suspect that has really helped.

Some bulbs have other plants have self seeded in the grass, and we have our usual carpet of wild violets, which also seem to have found themselves a new home between the paving and slate outside the greenhouse. Both the leaves and the flowers are exquisite, though MOH is less welcoming to the ones in the grass.

We’re still waiting for the march of the forget-me-nots, they are rampant in our garden and while the blue ‘fluff’ is welcome to start with, it doesn’t last. Our challenge is always to pull them up before they set seed, so it becomes a bit of a race. We know that’s to come, but in the meantime let’s just admire the blossom while it lasts.

Irony and priorities

The irony of the timing and my choice of word aren’t lost on me, but as there’s no time like now to refocus and create new habits I’m going with it. I’ve posted here before about choosing a word for the year. It’s something I meant to do this year but never had the time to contemplate in ways I had previously - usually I post this in January, heck one year I even managed December, but here we are scraping in just before the end of April.

Irony isn’t my word for 2021, it is in fact priorities

And yes, I know if I was living my word then this post would have already been posted, but that’s exactly why it is the right word for me, and why I’m posting it now. With some time to think and structure those thoughts (a little) it seemed an obvious word to choose.

Like many people my pandemic-filled year has been pretty full on and busy with my day job, which I was fortunate to be able to continue to do from home. It’s usually a busy role and with Covid it stepped up several gears. Even after recruiting a team of two to work with me it’s still busy, and while I know I’ll never reach the end of my to do list (I’m at peace with that - I’ve realised over many years that there will always be more to do) it doesn’t really look as if it will be dialling down any time soon. So throughout the various lockdowns and whatnots I’ve been mildly annoyed with media suggesting that lockdowns have meant more free time, learning new skills and full of banana bread making and sourdough baking - even though I’ve made plenty of those during the past year, and will more than likely continue to.

I’ve realised that when I’m at work (even at home) I’m fully immersed, and when I’m not working and spending time at home I’m fully immersed there too. Something had to give and as you may know it’s been this space, and that’s not how I want it to be. I’ve been powered in both environments by “just one more thing” - so maybe I’m not totally at peace with not getting everything done, at work and at home, but not here.

But I’ve also realised that I can choose.

Choice - not a contender for my word, but could have been now I think about it - is in my gift, and so are sticking to my priorities, which I know may flex and adapt as life changes and flexes. I’m still working through what it means for me, and how I put that into practice but as Gretchen Ruben says in Better than Before:

Nothing is more exhausting than the task that’s never started, and strangely, starting is often far harder than continuing.

Reading is one of the things I’m doing more of too, and yoga. If I’m honest, I’m better at reading than yoga but I’m sure like most things, with practice, I’ll improve and be slightly less wobbly. That works for my word too, doesn’t it?

So here’s to feeling less torn in so many directions, or at least I hope that’s what it means - and to prioritising the things that are important to me, which realistically could be getting a piece of work out the (virtual) door, or even closing my laptop so that life outside work can take its time as my priority.

I’d say wish me luck, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to need more than luck to make the changes I want.

Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

A bathroom refresh update

Back in January I shared our plans to refresh our bathroom which was booked to take place in February. On the day our plumber arrived, but only to ask if we would allow this to be rearranged. It was one of the snowy days in February, and many of his other clients were suffering broken boilers. It was a cold day and not the day to be without heating or hot water, and so we rearranged, knowing that we would want other people to do the same for us.

So last month the plumbers returned and the work could start in earnest. But first a couple of before photos:

The sink, the toilet and the shower were all being replaced. The tiles on the floor and walls, the cabinets and the shower enclosure were all staying. This may have made it trickier but we’re not ones for replacing things that continue to work perfectly well.

Like many refurbishment projects, quite often it gets worse before it gets better. And ours was no different. This was taken at the end of day 1:

The day hadn’t gone well. The sink refused to come off the wall. It had been glued and bolted to the wall, this could have been a contributory factor to the stress veins in the photo above. In the end a rather large hammer was taken to it - at one point the second plumber asked his boss, if he needed a bigger hammer. Yes, it was that kind of day.

The replacement shower had different fixings, even though it looked as if they were the same, and that wasn’t easy to remove either. They were loathed to smash the tile until they were sure we had a replacement tile. We did, and I knew exactly where they were - in our gabion baskets of course. Thankfully not under the pizza oven, but in the seating alongside it. Not in the shed like normal people! Though that’s unfair, they had been in the shed until we put these together and in an attempt to clear the shed some more, we used these until the slabs in the smaller baskets. That did mean one was easy to rescue, and I think the plumbers were slightly bemused by the fact too.

But it did mean they could do this.

They left for the evening, and after an afternoon of hopping about waiting to use our second loo (which they thankfully did sort for me) you’d think things couldn’t have gotten any worse.

And then they did.

The second loo, our spare loo, failed. It wouldn’t stop filling up and so they came back. But the mechanism failed and so overnight we didn’t have a flushing loo, one of the most stressful nights we’ve had in a while, I can tell you. By now I was making contingency loo plans, trying to work out where my nearest loo would be, apart from our neighbours, and in a pandemic.

But thankfully it wasn’t needed, as at the end of day 2 it looked more like this. It needed a clean, but it all worked, and so did our second loo. Phew.

The shower and the replacement tile were also in place and working. There had been much discussion amongst the plumbers on which colour grout to use, which was entertaining and welcome, as it showed the pride they had in their work and in doing a great job for us.

We’ve a few more things to do, including painting the shelves and built in useful cupboard, but it’s good to see the changes so far, which have brought it up-to-date, provided extra storage and reintroduced hot showers!

More to follow, but first I need to find paint to complement the very dark navy of the unit above, to transform our dark brown/almost black handy storage cupboard, and then to buy it and finish the job. Small steps, and all that.