Home alone

Two almost-whole days, an evening and night to myself!

This doesn't often happen to me. Its much more common for M. to be left at home whilst LG and I visit elsewhere.

All of my family - except me - will be visiting my parents this weekend. I have a cold and can't risk passing on infection to my mother. So I'm staying home. Alone.

With such mixed feelings.

I know my mother (and father, of course) will miss me. Not because I'm particularly special, but because we are all special to them, anyone missing would leave a gap. I will want to be there tomorrow, when the whole family gathers. Having a good time and being together and inevitably wondering if this will be the last time.

After a few weeks of increased pain and problems, my mother is a bit better now after changes to her meds. So after a growing dread that this was the beginning of the very end, she is now back a bit more on the side of the living. Not quite on level ground, but she's not speeding too fast down the hill away from us just yet.

But I will also be so glad of the time here alone. Cherishing the silence, the lack of demand, expectation, reaction, effort.


It will be strange.

Vanilla Beer

Look what I got in the post this morning.

My mum recently gave me some money... and I'd been looking wistfully at the fabulous french food paintings by Vanilla Beer .... who we happened to meet up with again last week at the opening of a show she has in London ... so here is the outcome of all that synchronicity.

Vanilla is an ex-student of mine, an artist now living (mostly) in the south of France. There is a link to her on my side-bar. She is wonderful, so fun and interesting and creative - do have a look at some of her work.


The title on the painting is: "Joie au coeur fait beau teint" : A happy heart makes a beautiful complexion.

This will give new heart and life to our dining room.

Swapsies

This is what I received via Tat's Vintage Swaps.

I was sent a nice old edition of Peter Pan, some lovely slippers to keep my toes toasty while reading it, some sweets, tissues in a fab. hand-made vintage fabric case, for the weepy bits (I remember seeing Peter Pan at the theatre, and trying to clap without my family seeing ("Clap your hands if you believe in fairies" - to bring Tinkerbell back to life), spare pixie dust (in case I run out), some buttons and hand-made vintage-pic gift tags.



What a lot of lovely stuff! Thanks Kirsten.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RW

Glitter My Words

FRIDAY 13th
ITS NUMBERWANG!


Primula Wisteria Leylandii

Primula Wisteria Leylandii

Primula Wisteria Leylandii

Primula Wisteria Leylandii





Have a lovely weekend RW

snap shots

Snap shots from last weekend.

A magnificent yew tree in my parents garden.
There was a yew tree in the front garden of the house where I grew up, for my first nine years. I grew up knowing yew was poisonous, and also loving it.















More pictures of the garden. Mum can no longer garden with my dad, and he has fairly graciously let go, ignoring weeds and work-to-be-done. But the garden still looks wonderful, and they have only just finished eating their own beans from the little veggie patch.






































This exquisitely lovely tree is a spindleberry.



















The berries will apparently turn themselves inside out and produce startlingly orange stamens.













Doing jigsaws is another favourite shared activity which Mum no longer engages in. It was with a painful flinch that I realised I'd just given some new (charity shop) jigsaws specifically to my father, rather than to both of them as always before.

We spent some time together on this one - appeasing my guilt at giving it to him at all because its a lot harder than it looked from the picture!














The house is always full of cards from friends around the world. My mother is loved by so very many people. When the window ledge gets too full, they are collected up and put away, and they start over again. Mum is a great letter writer, and spends time every morning writing cards and notes, she replies to every one.













The house is always full of flowers too - a bit overwhelming at times, but they give mum a lot of enjoyment.


One friend sends flowers, or a plant or something, every two weeks.


This olive tree was one of the "or somethings".



















Mum may not be up to gardening or jigsaws, but we did make marmalade last weekend.




Bought marmalade just doesn't do.



















It was a very good weekend, following some not so good days during the week.

She is more often having more pain and the oncologist was disappointed that the chemo hadn't reduced the cancer/s and need for pain relief at least a bit. BUT a recent scan showed that there was no growth or spread in the cancers, which was way better news than we had all expected.

Up until recently there have been many more good days than bad and they have been painfully precious.

Most recent news is not so good, more pain most days at the moment.

Penicillin

Look what I found lurking in the bread bin, when I returned from my weekend away.





I wasn't expecting it - honest I wasn't.

despite having made similar discoveries on my return from France in August, and on many of my more recent homecomings. Some of it has been not only grey and white and furry, but also pink and orange.

I wasn't looking or checking, really I wasn't.

I was just looking for some bread.

I'd fancied toast.

Reconstruction

Off to visit my mum again this morning for a few days, but just time for another post before then.

It does go on a bit I'm afraid, but at least I don't post very often at the moment!

Here is a picture of the end of my garden, as it was until May this year.












With the help of my sister and BIL, we spent a weekend clearing and dumping. In June/July came the shed purchase and erection. (see my July posts for quite a lot about sheds) {if you really are interested that is}

Since then either I've been away from home, or its been too hot, or too wet to garden. (Or I've been too busy playing games on the computer/gloating over vintage buttons/making tassels).

Recently, however, I've back in the garden, digging, levelling, clearing rubble, planning, sitting in my shed.



This is just some of the rubble I've dug up. I suspect this is the site of an air raid shelter. No interesting historical finds though.

As we don't have a car to get it to the dump, this rubble is being surreptitously sneaked a little at a time into the wheelie bin.




And this is what the end of the garden looks like now.









My most recent excavations have been around the corner which houses the compost bin, which used to look like this















but now looks like this.


I'm so very pleased with myself! and now the side of the neighbours (fabulous) shed is accessible, giving me some ready made little shelves. Just waiting for embellishment.


So I'm thinking about what to do with/in this little corner. A climbing plant of some kind in the very corner, definately. Possibly a mirror, if I find something suitably garden-shabby-chic at the boot fair?


I will also be putting in a little frog pool. We quite often see frogs in the garden, and I like to encourage the little guys. For their own charm, not solely for their slug/snail-eating habits. I think all my clearing out has been effectively a process of eviction for one little frog I've been seeing, so I will be sinking a nice glazed pot into the corner, somewhere near the shed, and filling it with rocks, water and plants to give her somewhere to bask. (A great idea [I hope!] from Great Gardens for kids - which has some really lovely garden suggestions, whether or not you have children).

Feel free to stop reading now if you've had enough, this might go on a bit, but all this work has a curious resonance for me with whats been going on in my life over the past year/18 months. If you've been reading this blog for a while and/or know me personally, you'll know that my primary relationship - and my life in general - have been in trouble - and the work in my garden is quite an apt metaphor for whats been going on. I've been thinking a lot about/while digging.

This part of the garden was filled with rubbish and rubble, mouldering and neglected, with chunks of secret dereliction hiding under the soil, making it hard and inhospitable to growing things - apart from unwanted weeds and painful nettles, flourishing and working their tangled roots down into the ground.

It was a forgotten eyesore which I tried to put out of my mind and live around.

It seemed beyond my resources to deal with.

It was wasted space.

It was getting worse, sprawling further, a growing gaping repository for detritus, junk, the unwanted, broken, forgotten.

Hopeless.

NOW
the ground is clear. Heaps of rubble and broken glass have been dug up, examined, sorted, disposed of - some of it dumped, some of it salvaged.

Some of these discoveries, I could have predicted. Some of them were more unexpected and surprising.

As work progresses, there may be more to unearth - which I will deal with as it comes and when I find it.

There is space.
I can imagine possibilities for building, reconstruction, creativity, growth.

I can sit alone in my shed and think. I take time for myself.

I've had some help, but a lot of this activity has been solitary.
It feels as though I've been doing a lot of work by myself.

and
not everyone who lives here has the same visions or expectations of what might be possible in this space.

But there has been such a transformation already. There is such potential. I am pretty hopeful.
Most of the time.

Maybe by next summer this space will full of green and flowers.

and frogs.






To be honest, I wrote this a few days ago, and feel less hopeful at the moment. But I'm sure I'll be hopeful again soon. :o)

Sheffield park

During my last weekend with them, my mother was well enough for a couple of hours out in the sunshine. We visited Sheffield Park Gardens in Sussex, designed originally by Capability Brown, and now a National Trust property. Its mostly grass parkland with wonderful trees and shrubs, and quite a lot of water - lakes and falls. The trees weren't quite at their Autumnal peak, but were still stunning.

Some pictures follow - easier than words.












And in the midst of it all, my mother whizzing around like a little old lady dalek.

TWELVE TODAY

Well, LG's age is beginning to catch up with her behaviour.

TWELVE today. A teenager next year, as she keeps gleefully informing us.

Twelve years of transformation from this:


















through this, for a while









Milly Molly Mandy?






First day at infant school:



















to this: in brand new twelfth-birthday gear:



Sorry for the not-quite-up-to-standard quality of the pic. - taken on a mobile phone.

The fact that she is just about taller than me in the buffalo boots greatly enhances their attraction for her.

Obviously.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE GEM (I'm under instruction here) DEMON CHILD

Bizarro world

No - its not RW and the girls (in London, at the end of the summer holiday in August) who are/were bizarre (on the other hand ..... )



Nor even the pigeons eating left over lunch



It was after lunch that we entered Bizarro World - AKA the London Aquarium.

Lots of pictures follow - I'm so pleased with my great new camera (not only new, but free).
So if you're not interested in bizarre pictures, or if fish leave you cold - feel free to depart now. Please come back another day.




We saw:

1. the predictable






(but still quite impressive)











2. The pretty:


(Nemo fish to most of us)








3. The surreal and alienesque:
























4. The closest I'm ever likely to get to a coral reef:












5. The bizarrely-named :
Peter's Elephant-Nose


















Fox-face rabbit (???):











"Tom-pot Blenny" wouldn't even come out to be photographed at all. And who can blame him/her?

6. The whiskery. (personal chin hair comment deleted)
















7. The almost-invisible.
There are 3 fish in this picture.














8. Those that probably wish they were invisible












and 9. Those which really should be invisible:



















10. The vaguely disturbing















11. The definately disturbing.
















12. The beautiful. My favourite. What fabulous colours. Inspiration for a tassel maybe....










13. The beastly. aka "butters" (butt-ugly according to current south London slang.)


















14. The extraordinary and not-at-all-fish-like


















15. Robotic. Bizarre on quite a different level.



























16. Touchy-feely.
Also bizarre and unexpected, in that they felt unbelievably soft and velvety.
















17. And finally - the cute and very appealing.
At least, to me. Does that make me bizarre?


















So which of these would you most like to eat/be/be eaten by?