My garden in December and January

It’s been a quiet couple of months in our garden. Winter is obviously usually quieter but it seems even more so because of the weather. In December we had frosts, then our leaves fell and then snow. It’s not been the most inviting of weather to get out into the garden, and so I’m covering two months in this post.

The frosts were certainly pretty, and I loved to see the frosted spider webs though I imagine the spiders were less keen.

The whole garden took on a Narnia-like quality, and we spent quite some time admiring it from inside!

Up until this month the weather had been unseasonably warm and our leaves hadn’t yet fallen. Once the frost and snow had gone nature set about righting that and quite literally overnight we were right back into autumn. At least they all came down at once, usually it is over a longer period - so the clear up was at least shortened too.

Sadly the cyclamen weren’t a fan of the frosts and snow, and looked very sorry for themselves. They haven’t really recovered and the leaves have gone leaving the corms showing. They’ll come back though, I’m sure.

So unusually December was about leaves, frost and snow - quite a way to end a year of strange weather.

And in January…

The frosts continued, but at least the days were bright if not on the cold side. And we’ve had some glorious blue skies. The fatsia is still recovering from the frosts, its leaves drooping just as they did in the drought this summer. Over the month the grass has gradually defrosted, and while it’s not quite a mud bath it’s definitely softer than frozen.

There is signs of new growth though. Among the flower beds the cyclamen leaves (which were in a more sheltered spot so fared better) are now being overtaken by the euphorbias, who in turn have the beginnings of their lime green ‘flowers’.

The bulbs are also pushing their way through the soil. In the pots I have tulips and alliums, and there’s daffodils throughout the garden. I read recently that squirrels don’t like the smell of daffodils and leave them alone, it seems though the scent doesn’t travel that far as the squirrels are more than happy to make holes in the grass, much to MOH’s annoyance.

I’ll leave you with a shot of the faded hydrangea heads. They’re mostly still going strong, having weathered the frosts and the snow - and still manage to look beautiful. I’ll need to check them next time I pop out, to see if the new growth for this year has started yet, or not.

How’s your garden fared this winter?

Errands in The City

On Monday I needed to run some errands in The City. It turned out my timing was impeccable as the sun was out and the temperatures milder than they’ve been all year. So it was rude not to make the most of, what is now an all too rare trip into town. I’d already made sure to catch a glimpse of my favourite City view, looking through to St Stephen Walbrook from St Swithin’s Lane.

The City is one of those places that really does look glorious in the sun, and I couldn’t help but stop and look back towards Bank junction as I crossed over and headed for the ‘wibbly wobbly’ or more properly named Jubilee bridge. My plan was to head over to the Tate Modern, somewhere I’d not been for quite a few years, and to look at the exhibition in the large turbine hall and perhaps a look around some of the other spaces.

I’m very much of a dip in and out type of person when it comes to museums, not someone who has to see everything on every visit. My approach works well when you visit regularly - and we haven’t - but I’m hoping it’s something that we’ll get back to doing more often, and so it’s great to be able to do this for free.

Cecilia Vicuña’s Brain Forest Quipu

The exhibition in the large Turbine Hall is made up of sculpture, sound, music and video. Quipu isn’t something I’d heard of before, but it’s an ancient South American recording and communication system made from knotted threads. Here the artist has worked alongside artists, activists and members of the community on this project with some of the items used in the sculptures collected from the banks of the Thames by women from local Latin American communities.

At the centre of Brain Forest Quipu are two sculptures that hang 27 metres from the ceiling. They are woven together using a range of organic materials, including found objects, unspun wool, plant fibres, rope and cardboard to evoke the look of bleached-out trees and ghostly forms.

It is these two sculptures that capture people’s attention. You can walk among the hanging threads but are asked not to touch them. Along with the audio playing in the hall, as you wander amongst them or sit and let your eye explore the full height of the sculptures, they really do become mesmerising and even mindful.

I was also intrigued by the ‘web’ holding each of the strands, which in some ways was acting as a giant rotary washing line. It was only as I went up to the upper walkways and floors that I got a closer look.

If you’ve not been to the Tate Modern it’s hard to get a sense of scale of these pieces, or of the Turbine Hall which is huge. It’s 155m long, 23m wide and 35m tall - the roof light has 524 glass panels.

And somehow that means the 27m sculptures don’t look that big from a distance - see how small the people on the viewing platform look in the photo below.

So a great day: errands completed, feeling the warmth of the sun and some cultural inspiration too.

A rip too far...

Finding a good pair of jeans is a tricky business, I’m sure you know what I mean. But when you find a style that you like, and the fit is comfortable and also flattering it’s like gold dust. I found such a style relatively recently (Marks & Spencer, Harper Cigarette if you were wondering) and I bought a couple of pairs, liking them so much I went to buy some more and there were none to be seen. Panic. They have since come back on the site - at a new price (of course) - and I’ve purchased another pair which I’m equally happy with.

One of the original pairs I bought came complete with wear and tear, turn ups and a ripped knee. Over time the rip on the knee grew, not helped by my foot looking for shortcuts when putting them on. It grew too much for me, and so I decided to tackle it, and after a quick repair, I think it’s worked well - and I think I prefer the rip this way.

This is where I started from:

I bought a pack of iron-on denim patches - there’s patches for denim of every shade imaginable, and because I wanted to patch from the inside I chose the grey denim patch, as that’s the colour I’m least likely to own jeans in! I pinned that on the inside, remembering not to have the sticky side up, as sticking the patch to my iron wouldn’t be good at all.

I realised that with the sticky side up and a hole on the other (right) side, that my newly patched jeans would quickly become a dust and fluff magnet. Also not a good look.

So I hunted through my stash for a small piece of fabric to insert into the hole and make use of the stick from the iron-on patch.

And while this fixed the fluff and dust magnet problem, it didn’t really solve everything. With the patch and material in place the hole wasn’t attached at its edges. And that’s when I had the idea to get out my box of random embroidery threads

I soon realised that the scrap of material I’d chosen must be very me, as the colours in the first section of the embroidery threads matched it pretty well. I contemplated doing something with the peach, green and brown threads but also didn’t want to restrict what I could wear my jeans with. In my head adding colours to the jeans would do this, but luckily in the next section over was a selection of blue threads. These were left over from some cross stitch pictures which I made many years ago, and which I wish I still had. Sadly I think I must have thrown those out a while back, as even with all the sorting out I’ve been doing I haven’t found them yet.

But as you can tell I have strong memories of those four pictures - they were a labour of self love - and so I quickly knew that I would use the variegated blue thread to secure the loose denim.

I decided on a few rows of simple running stitch to secure the fabric decoratively, and I’m really pleased how it turned out. It’s a pretty way of extending the life of these jeans, which apart from a larger than intended rip are perfectly fine.

Next time, I may even be braver!