Yes, I know, 1.30 pm on a Sunday is not the best time to go to the supermarket. It’s the window for the weekly shop for legging-clad girls on a flying visit straight from aerobics. It’s for middle-aged husbands looking for alfresco lunch ingredients, and for young dads, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by the children. I smile at the hen-pecked husbands, ringing home to check if Greek olives will be OK as ‘they’re out of Spanish’. Although just green…
Ahh, deadheading roses, cutting back Japanese anemones, typing up heavy-headed hydrangeas, all in the dappled sun of a late October afternoon. That’s my type of gardening. For my DH, gardening is decimating hedges, hacking off overhanging branches, then, knee-deep in the wreckage, shredding every last frond and branch, and covering freshly-weeded flowerbeds with the resulting fallout all in the same day. This is hardcore to my genteel dabbling; Wickes’ builders grippa gloves to my floral Cath Kidstons. DH’s gardening usually…
Each year we watch our grapes grow from hard little green pellets to plump translucent beads of juicy flesh, but…just before we get round to picking them, boof, they’ve gone. Whether eaten by birds, destroyed by extreme weather or pinched by the neighbours, we’ve never experienced a good ‘vendange’. One year we did pick a couple of trays of grapes, juiced them and enjoyed a couple of bottles of ‘jus de la vigne’, but after a couple of barren years,…
Local charity – The Fircroft Trust – held their annual Spring Fair on Saturday 10th May. After heading for the plant stall, I was diverted by some very interesting books, particularly a well-thumbed paperback by Honoré de Balzac, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and a couple of thrillers I fancied. I queued to pay, soon to realise that the book stall was in the next room – these were from the centre’s bookshelves…doh A straightforward transaction at the plant stall – home-grown…