Merry Christmas to You All, Where-Ever You Are!

Good morning!
I am wishing you a very joyful, merry and peaceful Christmas.
Even if you do not believe in Christianity as such (like myself), the thought 'do not do unto others what you would not want to be done to yourself' is a good and sound one. Hold on to it!

Lots of love,
Renée

Oh...It Feels Like Autumn Has Arrived! 10 Reasons Not to Panic.

If you are a Summer person, like me, the arrival of the berries on the Hawthorn may fill you with trepidation.

And no, these aren't them. It is an Autumnal image though...

We have a saying in my part of the Wetlands: when the Hawthorn berries turn red, Autumn has arrived.

And they have. Turned red.

And my predominant emotion is noooooooooooooo, I'm not ready!

Autumn means damp, and wind, and wetness, and getting up in the morning when it is still dark, and all too soon it means getting home in the dark as well.

And I'll feel like a frigging mole for months on end.

So. This year will be different. I have decided this single-handedly.

And to help myself along (and you), I will now proceed to list 10 reasons not to panic.

1. Toadstools are lovely. Even when there are no faeries sitting on them (if there are, they are even lovelier, or you have been at the wine again)

2. Autumn leaves are gorgeous and smell divine

3. Autumn is the perfect excuse for lighting the wood stove, which is the perfect excuse for making either hot chocolate or for opening a good bottle of wine

4.  The grapes are ripe, which means I can do my thing and make grape juice and grape jelly and grape-and-apple confiture (no wine, alas, we do not have enough of them. Erm...is it me, or is there a very high wine content in this post?)

5. Most youngsters leave our communal park hang-out and move indoors. This makes our nights a lot quieter - which is good. Quiet is good, when you are over 55.

6. Temperatures dropping are a good reason for making stews and hotpots. Somehow these dishes do not appeal to a lot of people when the sun is shining and everyone is drinking either Radler or Rosé.

7. Autumn is the approach to Winter. And Winter in the Wetlands could (note the word!) mean ice, which in turn could mean ice skating on natural ice. Now, you do not know this, but we Dutchies are a bit loony where ice skating is concerned. My husband, for example, is known to drop everything and will risk his life to be one of the first ones to skate on 'virginal' ice. It is always business before pleasure; until the nearest lake freezes over. Then it is 'where did I leave my long underwear'.

8. Autumn means running up to Christmas. We, non- Christians, are big on Christmas in our house. Weird, I know. It is the lights, the cosy tree, the lovely shop windows, the planning of parties, the planning and making of dinners. (Not so much the music; when I hear Wham's Last Christmas one more time I'll probably puke)

9. Autumn means our own apples from our own Elstar apple tree. Without doubt and without boasting the best tasting apples ever. The non-wormhole ones we eat raw, the others we dissect and make apple sauce from with lots of cinnamon.

10. Autumn usually has dreamy quiet windless days in between all the wet windy ones. Those quiet days are gorgeous. You can feel the world slowing down. Nature winding down. Mosquitos leave. The starlings and jackdaws wheel through the sky in their hundreds and make up for the fact that the swallows and house martins have left for Africa. Spiderwebs make the garden a jewel filled treasure trove. 

See? it's not so bad.

Enjoy your Autumn!

Making our world just a tiny bit prettier ...guerilla gardening.

Good (Sunday) morning to you! Hey, you over there in China, ni hao?
This is a post about guerilla gardening.

When we moved into our house 21 years ago, our garden was an empty nettle infested, paved bit of rubble. The guy who had lived there before us wasn't into gardening (an understatement if ever there was one!)

Now I had a horticultural certificate from the City & Guilds in London, but this was my very first private garden. So during the long cold winter months my husband and I planned what our garden was supposed to look like, and sowed thousands of seeds in seed trays, which were literally everywhere in our house. In the living room, in the bathroom, in the attic, in the kitchen. My baby son's first word was 'mama' but I swear one of the follower-uppers was 'plant' (except he couldn't pronounce the l, so it sounded like pant)

In February/March we dug up all the nettles (leaving a few right at the back, for the butterflies), dug out all the cracked paving stones, cut down the half-dead hedge, and planted out our seedlings.

It took years of trial and error. The soil, even though we mulch, is quite poor. So my beloved Alceas won't grow, and neither do the Paeonias. After buying new plants and trying to replant them for a couple of years, trying this corner and that, we gave up on them, and concentrated on plants which will grow in our North-East facing soil.

But, I'm happy and proud to say, we now have a garden which is lovely in all seasons, and the curiosity of the street (not that I care about that, but my neighbours all remark about our garden...usually ending their remark with: "not our cup of tea, all that hard work"). 

Guerilla gardeners.
So, what do you do, when you have a thriving garden, which produces seedlings, shoots and bushes growing too rampant? Do you throw away all that bounty?
Of course not! You dig up and replant elsewhere. In the communal park, for instance :-)

This is at the back of our plot, where we've replanted Ribes, Red currants and the honey scented Spirea x arguta. The neighbourhood kids love the red currants when there are ripe, but unfortunately the neighbourhood dogs pee against the lower branches (not stopped by their owners....unbelievable!)

The bamboe is one of the few survivors of our predecessor. We didn't want it overgrowing our garden, so took it out and had it in a pot for years, and then planted it out in a boring corner of the park. After the terribly cold winter of 2012 it seemed to have disappeared, but look, it's back! And Theo has planted Hemerocallis in this bit as well, which will be blooming in May/June.

This is one of my favourite bushes: a red hazelnut. It is only just coming into leaf, and its nuts are gorgeous. This is a shoot off of our own bush, which is giving us kilos of nuts every autumn.

The Helleborus is a legacy of Wibe, our son, who had a thing for them a couple of years ago, and collected different species. We got too many, so planted them out in the park, where they thrive.

You don't see them yet, but in this corner I have sown lots of Verbascum olympicum and Digitalis. But the purple and white Honesty are already showing their colours, and so are the Lamiums.

Okay, I'm going to love you and leave you now, but not before I've shown you the latest pride and joy: the parrot tulip in our greenhouse, the first in bloom. Isn't it gorgeous?!