Green Fingers II

The greenhouse had been finished just a few days ago. It was a cold January and even in an unheated greenhouse the air inside the glass was warmer than outside. The condensation was grey it was so thick: it blocked the windows and water dripped to the floor. 

My friend D put in new shelves and kept the window open in an attempt to shift the condensation. But every morning the floor was wet as the rain or sleet blasted its way through the roof. Something had to be done. The cheap but attractive greenhouse was about to cost me a lot more.

Meanwhile just as we saw January out the new shed arrived. It was a very different construction. D and I had had great fun using a cement mixture to make the base. All I did was fill its hungry tummy with water and sand and I pressed the on-off button. Nevertheless I felt empowered!

The greenhouse continued producing condensation but the cement set overnight. It’s a chemical reaction and not dependent on heat for drying and setting. Through a chemical reaction called hydration

calcium oxide, aluminum oxide, and ferric oxide react together ( CaO.Al2O3.Fe2O3 )to form cement.  

Again, it’s amazing what you learn. I did pass ‘A’level chemistry so I understand it ( a bit).

The base was set but the weather was closing in. Nevertheless, despite the dull skies, a kindly retired man delivered the shed  - and bang on time. He said he enjoyed his work - he felt useful in his retirement - and didn’t mind reversing his van downhill to our garage. He was able to lift each heavy section alone - showing the work was keeping him fit. Then D arrived to help carry the shed kit indoors. 

Happily the window section incorporated a large piece of (real) glass and the doors had their own key in a working lock. In addition there was flooring and high quality roofing felt. But the wood was so good it was a heavy kit to move. Between them the gents manoeuvred the sections into our empty garage. 

Next day D contacted his brother to help anchor the heavy wood sections on to the base. By 11:00 on Sunday they set to with just my trays of tea to sustain them.

They worked hard and I ordered take away roast beef for them as a thank you. Again the pub was allowed to serve take outs only. It seemed normal then but as I write such restrictions have been lifted and we can eat at tables again.

The boys did very well but D’s brother decided to get on the road early. Snow was expected and, naturally, he didn’t want to be marooned. Before he hit the road the roof went on - minus its lovely green felt - then the snow started to fall. 

At 4 pm I collected the roast beef and divided it up between us inside our barely weather-proof garage. D took his portion with him and the neonate shed had to cope on its own, unprotected in the inclement weather. 

Meanwhile, in between making the workers hot drinks, I’d watched the film ‘The Train’ where French resistance workers try to divert a train full of art work away from the hands of the Nazis. I don’t know who worked harder: French resistance or my friend and his brother constructing the shed. Thankfully the snow didn’t last long. And we were proud parents - now a two-sheds family with an imperfect greenhouse. 

Next: how to get heat in the greenhouse and stop the condensation (it took months of effort). 

But the new shed was my play house and it filled me with glee. From an unpromising start it has become ‘a shed of one’s own’.  

Green Fingers

As a carer during the pandemic I have been cautious about mixing with others. I can’t risk my husband getting covid-sick on top of his medical state. And if I got covid he couldn’t care for me. My outlet has been: a ‘literature on film course’, swimming, art challenge, carers cafe, covid-safe meet-ups with mates… and my garden.

At the start of lockdown #2, November 2020, our garden fence and hardware chap said my shed was rotten. I was happy to replace it with a potting shed. We have little substantial window ledge room in our house making germination of seedlings difficult. A potting shed or greenhouse was required. This same chap said it was impossible to build a potting shed where I wanted it and thereby talked himself out of a job. A friend of ours understood exactly what I wanted. We perused websites and brochures and I ordered a £700 potting shed. Expensive but taller than average with double doors, space for the pine table we had from uncle when we got married, with good sized windows and much space for shelves and hooks. The greenhouse I chose was a wooden construction with polycarbonate windows. And about a third of the price. 

By January my friend-cum-gardener had made space for concrete bases for the shed and greenhouse in our top garden. He shifted the raised beds and ordered bags and bags of sand and cement. All was going well until the shed suppliers said there was a delay in receiving the shed sections their end. Was it covid? Was it Brexit? Either way we had to wait. Meanwhile the inferior greenhouse was available. As was the so-called help on their switchboard: 

Me: ‘Does the greenhouse come with its own staging?’

Reply: ‘What’s staging?’

Clearly an expert.

Nor did they know if it came with its own floor. 

However on delivery day, at the end of January this year, my friend and I waited for the driver to deliver the sections of the greenhouse via the back roads to the rear of our house. It takes some doing manoeuvring around our neighbourhood for someone with a lorry driving up from Southampton in hail and sleet. My friend and I stood at points along the road to flag him down in case we saw him driving the wrong way. It’s surprising what you learn about lorry types, their width and tonnage, when asking them to reverse down hill to your garage. And a neighbour had just had a load of logs delivered which was blocking the entrance to our slip road. That meant more work for my friend. But he is very fit, rarely tires and was a mountaineer in a past life. 

The sections were duly delivered but my friend discovered there was no greenhouse floor. He, being a quick thinker with an eye for a bargain, asked what the piece of wood was that was next to the shed and greenhouse sections on the back of his lorry.

Driver: ‘Oh that’s packing material.’

My friend: ‘Can we have a sheet as a floor for the greenhouse?’

Driver: ‘I don’t see why not. It’ll only go for scrap.’

Within minutes the driver had left to deliver another substandard shed to the Forest of Dean and my friend was raiding a skip for a doormat and blocks to use as a step into the greenhouse-to-be. 

As the concrete base had already been made I asked a young person I know if he could help assemble the greenhouse and next day the two men were in the top garden messing about with silicon sealant, nails, screws drills and polycarbonate windows. And no the pieces did not fit well together, yes there were gaps and it was a very cold Thursday in January. 

By mid afternoon I ordered them takeaway fish n chips as they’d been out there in the cold for ours. It was still lockdown and only takeaway service was available. And it was dark at 5 pm. So they sat with their fish n chips in the cold while I dished mine up on real plates. They didn’t come inside the house. It wasn’t wise and none of us were jabbed by then. 

But by the Saturday evening we had a greenhouse. Hoozah! It was then that the problems really started. So much sealant was needed to glue the sides together. The condensation was dreadful and the greenhouse window would not open. Then when it allowed itself to be prized open it would not shut. 

Should I have bought a more expensive greenhouse? Probably. But, as I write, it has grown my petunia plants, all my climbing and dwarf beans and is now producing sweet red tomatoes. Not all bad then. 

Next time I will write about the arrival of the shed. Not quite as exotic as the the arrival of the magi but it was an impressive bit of kit. 

Stay safe. And adieu till next time.

 

Applause for the pause

It has been a couple of months since my last blog. I - along with a friend or two - have been busy transforming part of my garden. Applause for the pause and more of that later. 

For all of us 15 months of lockdown, changing habits, using sanitiser, masks and contactless payments, standing a metre or two apart and joshing for supermarket delivery slots have altered us. I haven’t had the strain of home-schooling, nor working from home with a dodgy signal nor with bored children needing a lot of attention. I haven’t had to travel to work on a crowded bus, train or tube. But I am a carer. And I don’t watch football or tennis from the terraces. 60,000 spectators are due to watch the next round of our fabulous football team versus Denmark at Wembley on Wednesday but what of the covid risk? 

‘We are all spectators in a giant human health experiment.’

More prosaically I have chosen to go to friends, usually meeting in their gardens or in a conservatory, to outdoor cafeterias or to a carers’ cafe. But I haven’t gone anywhere with crowds. When I go for a swim I walk there through the city. Bath’s Pulteney Bridge has become very crowded  since the April lockdown restrictions were lifted. Traffic is back to its usual heavy self but the walk to my swim is along a lovely Georgian boulevard, up an incline and into a fairly spacious changing room in a hotel. Residential hotel guests are asked to change in their rooms meaning our changing area is for us - the members of the spa club. Fairly safe in terms of social distancing. 

I have, in the main, been able to keep my distance during lockdown but with rising cases owing to the delta variant of covid I am inclined to continue wearing my face mask and sanitising frequently whatever Bojo announces for the July 19th lifting of restrictions. 

But back to the garden. Since January friends and I have transformed an area at the top of the garden which was formerly just gravel with a few raised beds. It now has a greenhouse, a new substantial potting shed, three water butts with new guttering and the raised beds are truly raised. They are on legs! As I write my dwarf beans are in flower, the leeks are still thin but not still like strands of green hair, the climbing beans are climbing, spuds are flowering, the cabbages are getting fat and a few pea plants are growing strong. The rest have had it. But I never promised you a pea garden.

Beans are my thing! 

Next time I write I will tell you of the triumphs and frustrations of my more recent gardening life. Especially now I’m waiting for an op. on my knee. Just like Roger Federer. I have yet to get the deckchairs on the lawn this year. That tells you something! 

Adieu.

Bye for now.  

Going green

 The light streamed through our bedroom curtains at 5:30 am today and I was wide awake. But that was far too early to get up, feed the cat, get breakfast & make a cuppa. The wind had dropped, the storm had lost its energy. It was sunny out but felt very cold.

Thankfully I managed to get back to sleep and by 9:30 the day had begun (again.) However I underestimated how long it would take me to have a bath, hoover, do my hair, pack my swimming gear, get Richard’s meds and offer the cat four different types of food. Yes. He was being fussy. By 10:30 I had managed to eat breakfast and down a cup of tea. I had remembered to fill my water bottle, but had still to make Richard’s sandwich for lunch and pack myself a couple of mini cheeses. 

The BBC News clock showed it was 10:46 and time to leave the house. In my attempt to be green and have a low carbon footprint I’d decided to bus it into town. But as I slammed the front door I had a nagging feeling I’d forgotten something. It’s just as well that I checked my bag. I couldn’t unzip it as threads of the ribbon to my key chain had got caught in the zip. I tugged and tugged until by some miracle I eased the offending keys out of the pocket and fully unzipped it. Hey presto!  I could retrieve my bank cards. (Vital for contactless payments on the bus.) Imagine all that fiddling with a queue of folk behind you waiting to alight? Curses.

But by the time I’d got my zips sorted I was late. And of course, en route, I saw loads of people I knew who I would have loved a chat with. Instead I rushed to the bus stop with 2 minutes to spare. 

And every seat on the bus was taken or reserved for disabled passengers. A kindly person gave up their seat for me. I can’t stand for ages - I’m waiting for a knee op - I wanted to shout. But my glasses steamed up owing to my over loose MacPherson tartan face mask so I swore under the mask then took my seat. 

The bus journey and, later, bits of shopping were mercifully uneventful. And I had time before my swim to take photographs of the 1866 decorated post boxes in the beautiful Pulteney Street. But walking up the hill to the hotel’s swimming pool seemed arduous. I must have looked out of breath as an annoyingly chatty woman whom I remembered from the week before managed to catch my attention with the words ‘It’s easier downhill.’ Did I look that decrepit?

I didn’t engage in banter. She had irritated me the previous Tuesday but I found a bench, swigged a few mouthfuls of water and felt restored. Then I looked for the bike stands. Surely they’d always been at the entrance to the leisure spa? I hoped no-one was watching me wander around the car park with my shopping trolley looking lost and confused. 

Then I saw a rail with a very faint sign telling me ‘bicycles left at owner’s risk’. 

All I wanted to do was to leave my metal shopping trolley frame secured with a bicycle lock. I was taking the trolley bag itself into the lockers with me. There is no room for a whole trolley in the minuscule space they call a changing room. 

But, of course, the shopping trolley bag would not pull out of the frame. I tugged and tugged (again)and spilt my bottle of water on the ground and got cross. Then the bag budged and I staggered up twenty steps to reception where four young things behind the desk were chatting away. They ignored me so I shouted ‘I’ll just go through then.’

One thing about lockdown is that there can never be more than four people in the changing room at any one time. Bliss! And at least the locker was big enough for all my belongings. 

The water was warm. I saw an old friend who was just getting out and for over thirty minutes I exercised my podgy body. 

I love the water. Even the showers worked and I was the only one to use the hairdryers. I met another friend en passant and had a merry chat. But, of course, the feeling of energy and goodwill couldn’t last. The water dispenser had hardly anything in it and took an age to half fill my bottle. I was going to be late for my bus home...

And before I rushed downhill to my return bus I needed the loo. I had to negotiate yards of fat, blue tubes, brushes, huge vats of soapy water and electric cables. But I nipped into the ladies before being spotted. Contractors were shampooing the hotel carpets in advance of reopening after lockdown and I shouldn’t have been using the hotel guest loos.

Outside at the bike stand I retrieved my shopping trolley frame. The bag fitted back in place with remarkable ease and 

I managed to get to the bus stop with a few minutes to spare. Success! 

But my knee was hurting and I needed painkillers. And on the bus every seat was filled apart from the ones up three steps at the back of the bus. I swore, again, under my tartan mask. I was in luck. A very nice woman looked after my trolley as I really didn’t want to lift it up those three steps. 

And we were off. I pushed two painkillers in my mouth but couldn’t reach my water bottle. It was in my shopping trolley - where else? three steps away.

And then we were home. I saw a couple of friends on my walk back to my garden gate and enjoyed a well-earned cocoa when I got in. It was very blustery outside. But neither of my friends had had time for a cappuccino. I really felt the need. 

What’s the moral of the story? 

Going green is knackering.Even though we know walking and taking the bus will help save the planet and cut down on car exhaust pollution it takes effort to go green. What to do to make it more practical? Don’t take my shopping trolley on the bus? Go by taxi or simply leave more time to do things? Get sorted and get a takeaway cappuccino like everyone else? 

And stop being cross! Going green is going to be hard work, I think. Especially if I keep  getting red hot and angry. I intend to persevere and calm my temper. 

Tolkien & industrialisation

Many people know that JRR Tolkien moved from Africa to a Warwickshire village when he was a boy. His father died in South Africa before he ever set foot in England again. Later - owing to financial difficulties following his father’s death - their mother moved JRR and the rest of the family from the idyllic village ( the shire) to Birmingham. 

As someone born in the Midlands I can clearly see how the contrast between town and country, industrialisation and rurality, clean air and smoky, dusty air belched out by factories would strike a sensitive lad like JRR. 

My parents were professionals. They weren’t labourers but my grandfather was a skilled foreman at an iron foundry. The muck in the air created by the Bessemer Convertor eventually killed him and nana lived in reduced circumstances as did many women when they became widowed in 1930s-40s. However nana was looked after and employed by a good man - a family friend - who couldn’t see her financially ruined. And she owned her own house. She led a happy, hard working life thereafter.

Many years later when I was a child there was woodland at the bottom of our road ( sweetly called Nightingale Place) and our house was surrounded by three fields. It sounds idyllic. But it was close to the industrial midlands which JRR disliked. I never knew the inside of the factories and only noticed the noise they made when machines started up again one new year after a long festive break. JRR’s son, Christopher, who died in 2020, said his father had a fear of mechanisation and of the modern world: Rural life and certainties destroyed by machines.

Only now are governments waking up to the notion that if we destroy nature we destroy ourselves. If we burn fossil fuel the air becomes thick and clogs our lungs. If we fell forests and jungles we make creatures homeless. If we block out the sun we die.

I see more and more articles about electric cars and alternatives to power stations to heat and light our homes. During this lockdown we would have missed the tv and the internet for sure. We can’t endure a British winter without heating. So alternatives are essential if we aren’t to lead lives like 1380s peasants.

JRR Tolkien was right to draw a distinction between the ugliness of factory flames and pollution and the bucolic life of the countryside. It would take a huge amount of adaptation, however, to become demechanised: to get rid of our cars and learn to ride a horse or a bike again. It would take an immense effort to light our home with candles and go back to a range for cooking and heating. And industrialisation brought work to thousands in the Midlands.

But the decades of relatively cheap transport, fuel and power in the home has come at a cost. JRR Tolkien could see that. But a Professor of Anglo-Saxon ( who wasn’t even sent to school when he was little) and Professor of English Language and Literature is a very different man from a Midlands industrialist who sells taps, and a labourer who makes them, for a living.

Both thinkers and industrialists have to learn from each other if we are to avoid catastrophe. 

And now I read the headlines   “‘urban flight’ raises house prices in villages.” Another kind of disturbance and imbalance in the community. Another stress for the countryside to absorb. We all need to treat our environment with care. And not push out those families who made their homes there long before the pandemic. City dwellers may have enough capital to move to the countryside. But can villagers afford to live there when prices rise? 

There’s a lot to consider in the tug of war between town and countryside, urbanisation ruralism. We all need to have a care.  

fraud, a con merchant, scam, a rip off

What a strange day. I feel I’ve been ripped off three or four times today. It’s a record for me. I’ve never knowingly been conned nor paid over the odds for shoddy goods or workmanship nor been fooled into accepting something poor or ‘not as advertised’. But in these times of chronic penury and unemployment amongst, in particular, folks on less than the minimum wage, I came close to being a victim of a scam today - more than once.

Scenario one

A workman was going to do DIY for me as I can’t do it myself. I don’t do DIY. I GAMI instead. ( Get a man in). But this workman has put off coming round three times already. And, what’s galling is I gave him an advance so he owes me his time. I understand he may not be able to make it for a whole variety of reasons but jobs have to be done. I’m tripping over extension leads in our kitchen waiting for ‘the man’ to turn up and use them... Do I put them away? As soon as I do we all know what will happen.

Scenario two

Our local co-op is closed for a refit. Yes. Even in a pandemic. A time when for some people their local shop has been their lifeline, their time of social mixing and distancing, their link with reality. But hey ho. None of that matters - our store was only refitted five years ago. My god the logo and colour scheme is so last decade. 

So what do people like me do between big shops? I have a choice:

I go to my very local corner shop and pay heftily for some items, less for others

or

I go into the city to one of the bigger supermarkets 

or 

I use Deliveroo.

Today I chose the latter.

After watering all my plants, repotting my tomatoes and peas, weeding, moving geraniums and trays of leek seedlings into the greenhouse and sorting seed trays for sowing my beans I felt like making a quick order for one or two vital groceries. Yes it was quick to do but by 3:25pm - the deadline for the delivery slot - I received a message to call the rider. He or she couldn’t find our house. But he or she was on the phone every time when I rang so I left a message. Then an odd text message came up about verifying who I was with HSBC. My bank isn’t HSBC. I immediately sensed a scam and reported it via ‘chat’ to Deliveroo. Minutes later I had a phone call from Sainsburys head office in London and an official-looking email from Deliveroo. Head office was concerned that a) the rider hadn’t even collected all my order from the store and the author of the email was concerned that b) there was strange activity on my bank account. I was in the middle of an attempted scam. But Sainsburys and Deliveroo were on to it. And I wasn’t charged. I merely re-ordered my groceries and within minutes a genuine rider turned up with the groceries that, scam or no scam, I still needed. Phew!!!! I just hope whoever was behind the rigmarole has been identified and apprehended, me lud.

scenario three

I managed to make a staycation booking today. It is for three of us for a week in July and is before the schools break up for the long summer holidays. (Except they might all be doing summer school to make up for lost learning due to covid closures.)

A little while after the booking confirmation had come through the fees had risen. (They were already hefty imho but there was very little choice of accommodation left to book, for all the reasons we know). But costs had gone up by about £600. I complained to the owner/manager who has now given us seven nights for the price of six and the overall total is about £800 cheaper than it might have been. Another sneaky rip off which I narrowly avoided. 

It seems we have to have eyes in the back of our head, have to be alert to any suspicious or unexpected text or email and have to ignore landline phone calls from unknown numbers like the plague. It seems scams, frauds, rip offs and cons are the way some people are making money out of those of us who can still afford to GAMI, have groceries delivered and have a July holiday on the south coast.

I remember the tale of someone who was furious that their purse had been stolen. And a wise soul said ‘You may feel awful but how desperate must you be to have to steal a purse in the first place?’ 

But I’m still cross some folk out there think I’m a push over.

It has indeed been a strange day.  Behaviours during the pandemic have altered. All done under the cover of lockdown. Like spivs. The black market. That sort of thing. 

Different people are feeling the pinch. But I’m also somewhat distracted. Not only, among all of today’s shenanigans, did I break the handle to an Emma Bridgewater mug, rendering it useless, after, again, tripping over the extension lead in the kitchen for the man who isn’t there, but I decided to go to bed about 10:30 pm. I’d had a fruitless day.

Bed would be the best place for me. Or so I thought. 

But ... I’d only left the electric blanket on all day and the windows shut. It was like an oven in there. Even going to bed has been an ordeal this evening. A strange day indeed.

Brave cold world

 And tomorrow and tomorrow we six can mix in our gardens once more. Except this morning I wrapped up with scarf, beanie and parka just to go out to buy my Observer. It was near freezing!

All our heating went on - including the spare heaters in the hall and kitchen. Who’s going to mix in a six with a gin & tonic or Aperol spritz in their gardens in temperatures still close to 40 degrees?

The seedlings in my new greenhouse will have rotted before they get chance to emerge in to this brave cold world. I haven’t put the heater on in there for more than a few hours at a time and that’s clearly not enough in these late winter-like conditions. 

And in my case the socialising in a brave cold world will have to wait. I appear to be too busy: On Monday I will be socialising indoors with my surgeon. Yep I have an appointment in orthopaedics tomorrow. On Tuesday I’m doing a walk with a friend  on the canal towpath. Water is always relaxing. On Thursday Richard is socialising with his GP then the nurse and on Friday it’s shopping at the co-op and Carers Cafe. The cafe is a good mix of people and we chat and have a laugh. But we are allowed to do that during lockdown too. So that leaves only Wednesday when I can risk catching another kind of coronavirus by getting cold outside in our garden. I think not!

The weather forecast is looking better for early next week, hoorah. A mini heat wave. Until the short-lived sunshine fest gives way to more blasts of cold wind for Good Friday. ( Which reminds me - I must remember to buy Easter eggs.) 

The following week the only excitement in our household is having the window cleaner and a professional here for a post-winter deep clean. Perhaps, if temperatures allow, we can have a fish & chip supper outdoors again.

But the following week we have our rule of six at play in the garden for our 40th Wedding Anniversary. Our Ruby Wedding.

But even that will be so different from the celebrations we organised for my parents’ 40th. Dad, I recall, thought he was going to the garden centre to buy flowers for mum. And mum wasn’t sure what was happening. But we all ended up in my brother’s garden with my parents’ friends, neighbours and family. Looking back it took some effort but it was a lovely sunny September day. And dad was quite moved at the surprise we’d given him. The photographs tell us it was a grand day out.

Meanwhile for our Ruby wedding six of us will be wrapped up in scarfs and rugs on our patio eating a double-chocolate cake from M&S. And with a bit of luck Richard will join us. It is his wedding anniversary too but clinical depression can dampen any event. So not as much fun as my parents’ do but at least we have a few friends who want to share our day! 

The following weekend we are going away. Another friend is driving us to the seaside so that we can truly enjoy our Ruby Wedding. We have a regency sea-facing apartment booked. A few steps’ walk across the promenade from our front door and we are on the beach. Please let the sun shine as we enter our brave new, post-lockdown world.

( It’s too cold for me. After I’ve posted this I’m going to have to switch on the heating again. Brrrrr.)