Lockdown Gardening

I am not a natural gardener.  Neither am I an enthusiastic one; the sheer frustration of spending time weeding, clipping, mowing or pruning only to find just a few days later that you have to do it all again is not for me.  I like my hard labour to have long-lasting results, not just a couple of days of smug satisfaction whilst looking out on a well-ordered flower bed.

Generally, my approach to keeping our garden reasonably presentable is hit and run; if I find myself with both time and inclination then I may pull out the messiest looking weeds or cut back the rose that is threatening to obscure the kitchen window, but other than that I treat our outside space with benign disinterest.  Our better-organised neighbours probably hate it.  That said, I've been spending more time outside recently so have been paying more attention to what's going on out there...

This morning, as I look out at the pouring rain and contemplate just how wet the Dog and I are going to get when we venture out, I find myself - foolishly - thinking out loud.

'You know, the moss on the lawn isn't as bad as I thought.'

Husband breaks off from his ceaseless perusal of various news streams.  'How do you mean?'

'Well, you can see it from up here (I'm standing at our bedroom window), but as far as I can tell, the people either side of us - and either side of them - have it far worse.'

'Huh.'

'Although D, at the far end - his lawn is practically perfect.'

'Of course it is.  But D's a maniac in the garden.'

There's a pause whilst we both consider the madness of being emotionally invested in one's garden.  Then;

'Does it make you feel like you've won, then?  That we've got less moss?'

I'm horrified.  'No!  Of course not! Gardening shouldn't be a competition.  It's just, you know...'

'That you're happy we've got less moss.'

'Yes.'

'Because you've won.'

Goddamit, he's right.

Things I have recently learned...

... since moving back to the UK.

1.  How to bleed a radiator.

This is no small thing when you're living in an older house with an antique heating system, I can assure you.  Waiting for your managing company (we're renting) to send over a handyman to do the job for you gets old pretty quickly - especially when you realise you can buy the tool to do it yourself (a brass radiator key, approx. £2.50 from your local hardware store) just down the road.  OK, so there might have been a slight issue with dirty water squirting out from one of radiators, but what the landlady doesn't see (evidence of) won't hurt her.

And at least now your children - acclimatised to tropical indoor temperatures after 6 years in properly insulated and heated houses in Russia - won't have to sleep under two sets of duvets.

I am Woman with Brass Radiator Key - hear me roar...


2.  How to change a light bulb

Bear with me here.  I DO know how to do this, obviously.  But after 6 years as a cosseted expat in Russia, where - according to our tenancy contract - I wasn't supposed to (I had to call The Management to send over a workman to do it), I must admit to being surprised by the frequency with which it's necessary.  Again, old houses and their suspect wiring, I suppose.

I mean, I DID change light bulbs in Russia, of course I did.  Especially since the alternative in Moscow was waiting at home for a frequently chain-smoking workman to arrive whenever he deemed it appropriate (after finishing his lunch / afternoon tea / morning coffee / not at all), watch him as he took his boots off at the front door, put on his battered tapichki (slippers to you and I), listen to him mutter to himself as he wheezed his way through the house with his plastic bag full of an assortment of different lightbulbs for different light fittings, and endure his rattling smokers cough throughout.

OK, that was just the first guy who used to come, replaced after a couple of years by Ivan Version 2.0 - less wheezy and much more jocular - but the memory of Ivan Version 1.0 lingers, much like the scent of stale cigarettes and B-O that he so generously left behind.

So, on reflection, then and now, much better to do it myself.


3.  How to deal with Husband's misguided assumption that the garden in our new house is my responsibility.

Actually, this one was quite simple.  We recently visited Amsterdam, and passed the flower market.

Husband:  "Shall we buy some bulbs to plant out the back?"

Me:  "I didn't know you like gardening!"

Job done.

The Gallery; Still Life

Week 14 of Tara's Gallery. This week her prompt, inspired by a heavenly photo of some bacon, was 'still life'. I thought about photographing some food, I really did. But whilst we eat well here at Potski Mansions, we don't necessarily eat photogenic food. I'm going to blame the quality of the ingredients from Russian supermarkets not being what they might be, others might blame the fact that I care more about how food tastes than how it looks . Substance wins out over style every time, in my book. (Which might explain my tight waist-bands). Anyway, no pretty photos of cup-cakes or prawn cocktails here today.

Instead, I've photographed some wild flowers in the garden outside our house. They're not outstandingly beautiful, although they are quite pretty, but this photo is more about that what they represent than how they look.

We live in a compound, you see. We don't get to do the gardening ourselves; there's a team of people who do that for us. For the record, we are not allowed to do it. It's a tough life, sitting back and letting someone else take the strain, but I'm prepared to take that hit for the family...

Anyway, back to the point I'm trying to make. Not speaking much Russian yet, I don't have many opportunities to communicate with the gardeners here, but I'm betting they are not trained landscape designers, mainly because most of them are in fact from the same team of guys who keep the roads and paths clear of snow and ice in the winter.

So this makes it all the more suprising to me that this little patch of wild flowers - and many others like it throughout the compound - survive the ministrations of the gardeners driving the squadron of lawn-mowers that trundle out of the work-sheds at the back of the compound on any dry day in the summer. Most of the grass here is mown to within an inch of it's life, so how could the flowers have been missed, I wondered?

And then, last week, I was at home whilst the lawn outside our window was being mown, and I saw exactly how the wildflowers had survived when the guy behind the machine carefully and delicately mowed around them, making sure - in fact - that if even a single flower was blooming, he steered a course around it.

He clearly had a poet's soul.

So this photograph represents yet another reminder for me not to judge a book by it's cover.