Weekly Photo Challenge: Urban

Dead Thorns (Photo credit: Bryan Gosline)

I have always lived in towns or cities. I have moved house twelve times in my life, despite never being in the military; always to another town or city.

My parents were from central Liverpool.  My Mum had never had a garden so she was delighted to have a small patch when we moved to Runcorn.

She bought gloves, tools and a sun hat and went out armed to the gardening teeth, ready to dig up a storm.

Three minutes later, she was back.  She stood in the dining room and gazed around, not speaking to us as we looked at her.  Finally, Dad said, ‘What’s up? Why aren’t you gardening?’

Mum replied, ‘I saw a worm.’

That was the end of her gardening life.

Our first Christmas there, Santa brought my brother and I a swing for the garden.  I remember swinging happily one day, then suddenly finding myself lying face down in the rose bushes, a plank for a neck rest.  I must have let go too soon.

Dad loved roses but he struggled to grow them, despite careful pruning, watering and the following of instructions.  Around his seventh year of no roses whatsoever, he lost patience and hacked at the lot with a spade and much temper.

Year Eight: a fabulous crop.  Urban gardens are awkward for the sake of it.

Once we moved to South Africa, though still in towns, the houses had huge gardens.  Dad used his to escape Mum.  And Mum encouraged him.

I have never had any interest in gardening.  We had an acre of land around our last house and all we ever did to it was pay someone to cut the grass.

I am a town girl, born and bred.  Nature is for farmers and unhappily married people and the odd weirdo like Pseu and Viv.  I relate to the Mike Harding joke about his first visit to a large park: We knew we were in the countryside because it had railings round it.

But one nice thing about urban living, besides public transport, a shop on the corner, pavements and regular refuse collections, is the council’s attempt to bring the countryside to the residents.  This is the tree outside my kitchen window:

I watch it change all year round, from season to season (plastic bags blowing gaily from its branches).  My favourite time of year is autumn, when it changes colour.

Then the leaves fall off and the street looks a mess.

Ah, the beauty of urban living: someone else cleans it up.

Summer. This Time Without The Hissy Fit

Sorry about yesterday!  A full weekend, a lot of sun, a thumping headache and a faulty WordPress led to my little tantrum.  Having slept on it, it occurred to me this morning that the photos were probably still in my media file; and they were.

I was going to give you a gallery but I didn’t want to fiddle about too much and lose things again, so you have to scroll down instead.  It still took me an hour to compile this.  But I’m in control of myself…really…I’m not secretly sticking pins into WordPress dolls or chanting around a cauldron…honest…

 Remember my enthusiasm for cycling…?

Not the new X Factor judges all in a row…the bins are flattening the grass to make it short enough to mow

The dogs give new meaning to the word ‘weed’

I would be embarrassed but the weather has been so bad, we haven’t been in our garden since last September, so I didn’t notice what a mess it was.

Green shed from Freecycle; old shed from B&Q 15 years ago; dead plants from the Hub’s vegetable-growing period, in which we got one minute carrot and three tiny radishes, after an outlay of at least £70…gardening is not our area of expertise.

How will I get the lawnmower in this?!

Now for a spring cleaning miracle:

Did I work hard or what?

 

I left the weeds growing up the sides because they are quite pretty.  Green is green as far as I’m concerned.  I have no shame – I’m not a gardener, and never will be.  As this is barely a garden, I don’t think it matters.

Sorry about the bold; I’m not shouting: WordPress has found a new way not to co-operate.  Where’s my cauldron?

Related articles

• Weekly Photo Challenge: Summer (thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com)
• http://laurieanichols.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/a-grand-day-gardening/#comment-3060
• http://eof737.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/weekly-photo-challenge-summer/
• http://pseu1.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/contrasts/
• http://pseu1.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/other-peoples-gardens/

Thirty Pound Vegetable

No, I’m not talking about either of my children, though you would be forgiven for thinking that: the summer holidays are upon us and we have been blessed with unusually warm weather so the boys are taking advantage of it by wearing shorts and t-shirts while they play computer games in their rooms.

Take a look at the above photo. No, it’s not the Hub, either; it’s the thing he is holding. The thing is a spring onion, grown by the Hub’s own fair hand.

Let me explain: I have been saying for ages now that I fancy having a go at growing our own vegetables: cheaper, greener, healthier all round; useful to have in the back garden when the next civil and/or world war starts and food shortages bite. The Hub, bless him, despite knowing me for twenty-eight years, went out and bought me a starter kit. How I laughed.

Not liking to see abstract money sitting on the kitchen counter for three months and finally getting the idea that I am all talk and no action, the Hub decided to have a go himself, thinking it was a gentle activity that he could do at his leisure. I encouraged him because I needed the space to count my seemedlikeagoodideaatthetime projects, and because I like vegetables and having my husband out from under my feet.

You know what? Growing vegetables is hard work. Water them in the morning. Water them in the evening. Cover them from the frost. Uncover them for the sun. Kick the snails into next door. Fill the watering can because the Land of Neverstopsraining is having another hosepipe ban. Pot them, re-pot them, re-pot them again. Buy the pots. Buy the soil. Buy more seeds. And more, and more (when he takes up an interest, he throws himself into heart and soul and wallet). I feel quite sorry for him as I stretch out on the couch and think about it.

And the net result of all that hard work and massive outlay? One, that’s right, one measly spring onion. He didn’t even get to eat it because he doesn’t like spring onions. How ironic. It tasted delicious, all one of it, in my (shop-bought) coleslaw, smothered in mayonnaise.

I think.

How One Dad Made Us Spend His Day

Yesterday was a big day; one Spud and I had looked forward to with real dread: annual gardening day.  Every year there comes a point in the Laughing Housewife’s household when we open the back door and find ourselves re-enacting The Day of the Triffids. It is the day we realise that if we let Toby out to do his business, we may never see him again. In a post-apocalyptic future a modern Livingstone will be hacking through the jungle that is our tiny back yard and come across a forlorn four-legged skeleton, clinging to a weed and with scratch marks on the grass around him, as if he was desperately trying to find his way out and failed somewhat.

It being the third sunny day of the year and Father’s Day, and the Hub being the Father of the house and thus claiming seniority in a feeble attempt to wrest control from my delicate hands, he put his foot down with a firm finger in the direction of Stockport’s equivalent to Birnam Wood and declared that it was No Longer Need To Feel Ashamed At The State Of The Garden Day, and made us clean it up.

I say ‘us’ but he got stuck in as well. Trouble is, he will insist on being in charge and that leads to a few cross words and a few bundles of weeds being chucked across the garden and into his face. His CFS/ME means that he can’t do as much as he’d like to and he has to stop; it makes him frustrated and irritable with Spud and me. He knows – and we know – that he could do things better if he could do them at all, but that’s how he ended up getting ill in the first place. No danger of that for Spud and me, who did what we had to do but don’t care enough to do it to the Hub’s exacting and illness-inducing standards.  Particularly once the slugs showed up.

That reminds me of my Mum and her first garden; she had always lived in homes with no gardens until she was 37 and we moved to Runcorn. It was a small garden but she was excited to get out there. She bought herself some little tools and a hat and bubbled over with the joy of it. We watched her dig happily with her little trowel for a while, then went to watch telly. A few minutes later, Dad found her standing in the kitchen with her trowel, looking around as if she didn’t know what to do. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Dad. Mum blushed a little then said, ‘I found a worm.’ She had run into the house in a panic, and never gardened again.