Every Saturday, for many, many months during lock-down and beyond, I looked forward to reading an article in the Daily Telegraph called, What Katie did next. Following a break up with her fiancé Katie had decided to leave her life in London and move to Cornwall. Driven by memories of her childhood she wanted a country cottage with lambs skipping around in the fields. That idyllic country village life most of us have seen on television. I know it well. She was to find the reality quite different.
Her search proved fruitless when several offers to purchase fell through. She moved from one rental place to another and from one village to another and found acceptance among the locals difficult. One place fell through because the surveyor discovered a mine shaft on the property. No mortgage on that property for sure. It is so much harder to buy a house in England as surveys often fail for multiple reasons(Japanese knot weed in the garden!) and there is often a chain of selling and buying that falls apart.
When I started reading there were no thoughts in our mind about selling our wonderful house and garden. Then it happened. We bit the bullet. The house sold in the first couple of days.
I hope Katie's story won't be our, but the reality of it is that for at least 6 months it will be. We are moving into a rental apartment with a small patio with a view of a parking lot. There is a rather shrubby privacy hedge in the front. I may reshape it! We cannot get in until October so meantime we are homeless. For flexibility during that month it is a residence hotel.
We are not driven by a need for the countryside-wouldn't I love that field in England with skipping lambs, but for a need to simplify our life because of age. This is not a house that comes with few demands. Quite the opposite. It was a wonderful dream 20 years ago but 20 years on our lives are not the same and none of our family are anywhere closer than 1000 miles. By the time we settled here they all made their own lives in faraway places.
You know my style of gardening is never to throw away and to let the wilds take over. It's not a bad style because we have something here that the birds and bees and other critters want; food, a place to rear their young, and many do set up permanent residence. It is managed to the point that we do not have mosquitoes and can enjoy sitting outside at all times of the day. I just hope the new owners don't spray everywhere. I must accept that is no longer under my control.
Of course I want to tell them about all the plants that are here, especially the seasonal ones. They wouldn't know about all the pretty little species tulips, Tulipa clusiana, Lady Jane, and all other spring flowers now dormant during the summer. Will they tolerate those spiky things like liatris or pull them out before they flower in October? What about this, and this, and that...and all those other little things that pop up. One saving thing is that a family member is a gardener so maybe she will help them out. Maybe she will tell them to wait year and see what shows up before they begin to pull, because pull they will. We have always said that someone would likely come in here and tear everything out and put it a simple landscape and that could very well happen. I will accept that. We see it happening in our neighborhood at the moment and I have done it myself in the past (never simplifying of course.) When we left our garden in Toronto the new owners couldn't believe all the lovely flowers that came up that spring. They bought the house in March when there was still snow on the ground. I hope that is true this time.
For the first week I did not vary my morning routine? Not one jot. I went out as soon as it was light and marveled, as usual, at how plants had recovered from yesterday's 100° The first thing I did was to bend down and smell the sweetly fragrant bloom on the plumeria. No plant could be more forgiving than this particular one. Cut from one of my larger ones, in the late fall, and potted up in some soil and badly treated over the winter I watched as the growing points on the end of the plant shriveled. I didn't give up, and nor did it, and slowly but surely as the weather warmed the pleats in those shriveled stems filled out and then small leaves appeared. Within weeks it started to make a flower bud. It was potted in a nursery plastic pot so now I decided to put it into a clay pot. It refused to budge. I cut with a knife all the way around the inside by the edge of the pot hoping to release it and pulled. Imagine when, to my horror, it gave way coming out with a tiny root ball and leaving the majority of those newly formed roots behind. Still, I put it in its new pot and watered well for a few days so it would sustain its leaves. Now a month later it is looking as good as new and is flowering.
Two weeks ago I worked on cutting back the cone flowers, Echinacea purpurea, which had finished flowering. I have never seen any birds eating the seeds and I had so many that it was not a hardship to cut them to the ground. They had a very successful season and many had outstayed their welcome. Can you believe I filled two bins with cone flowers and cosmos, each time standing back on the upper level to see which plant would be next for the chop.
There was a Missouri primrose flowering one morning. It was the first one this year. The evening primrose and square bud primrose all flowered weeks ago and are finished. This one is a late comer and was happy for it.
And it wasn't long before I had a handful of 'weeds'.
And that all seems so long ago now. In the meantime there has not been any time for me to get outside with the various happenings. I am so glad that we have had rain because that at least helped me.....or did it? Suddenly, I am aghast at how quickly weeds are growing and spreading. My usual morning walks would find me pulling small ones here and there so that they never grew to any age. Now they are monsters. I took a five minute break yesterday and was horrified. It probably doesn't matter one bit in the end because I think the garden is in for some big changes. I thought the new owner might have been interested in some of my garden "stuff " The big pots, hanging baskets, wall art, cactus etc. No response but for wanting me to measure the kitchen bar granite so they can order some new granite. How about the pots at the front entry? No interest. So I am resigned.
Meanwhile, I am hard at work throwing away, giving away and packing for two types of storage. Short and long term. A job that only we can do. It is extremely time consuming. But as I dismantle the garden art and the inside of the house I think the reality has really set in. Yes, we are still eating breakfast outside and as I walk through the house I stop many times by a window to gaze on the view.
This morning I took down the Rock Rose sign so you know I have every intention of returning to the blogging world as long as you all are still out there blogging and reading too. It will be a time to catch up on myriad English garden visits and maybe a little of how things are faring on my little patio at the apartment.
