gardens

Pies and Pelargoniums

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 3 Comments

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Do garden centres send you into a frenzy of plant buying or do you go there to have your dinner?

To most people in the the twenty first century nurseries are where hard working parents drop off their children. Once upon a time nurseries grew plants in greenhouses and customers went to buy shrubs in the autumn, root stock wrapped in hessian, and bedding plants in the spring and summer. There was little chance of a cup of tea as you wandered along the rows of roses. The advent of container plants heralded change.

 

In a previous town our local garden centre had a cafe; a few plastic garden tables in the corner and a kitchen run at weekends by two sixth formers from our son’s class; they cooked excellent breakfasts.

When we moved to our current address the local garden centre was in a different league entirely. It had a restaurant serving breakfast, lunch, teas and every Thursday evening two dinners for the price of one. As our new house was without a cooker or table we soon joined the many locals queuing up at five thirty for the legendary steak pie made from their own cattle.

Since then the restaurant and seating area has grown even bigger; if there was a humanitarian disaster nearby this would be the place to send refugees for operational feeding. They could also camp there, making use of the vast range of garden recliners and hammocks.

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Our garden centre  sells more than plants and garden gnomes. As well as every gadget ever invented for your garden, water features and an upmarket gift section, you can also buy life size models of every creature from squirrels to gorillas, or perhaps a stone deer. I have yet to see anyone struggling to the till with a resin Great Dane, but presumably someone must buy these very expensive objects.

If all this shopping is too much you can stay in the restaurant and relax. Thursday evenings also brings local entertainment, usually a guitar or keyboard with the sort of music that makes me lose the will to live, but perhaps others enjoy it.

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More a way of life than a shop?  There are coach trips out to national gardens and coach parties calling. As well as the excitement of Halloween and Christmas displays with live reindeer, summer brings a real treat. This is how it goes. Arrive at dawn on Friday at the end of June, queue up ready for the doors to open at 8am. Then obediently follow the path to the desk where you can buy your special tickets for the New Forest Show, first come first served. The precious ticket allows you entry to the garden centre’s hospitality tent in the members’ arena. Free light refreshments all day, members’ toilets and a great view of the main rings with show jumping and carriage horses.

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And what about the plants? I always head to the reduced shelves, that keeps Cyberspouse happy,  find bargain plants and rescue them, but I also spend ages choosing more trays from the vast spread of colour and variety.

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This week real flower lovers will not be eating steak pie, they will be at the Chelsea Flower Show.  I would love to go, but I would hate the crowds and the truth is, only television presenters and the Royal Family are allowed to wander in the wonderful gardens. We can watch every evening on television, but miss the scent of the blooms, so back to the garden centre. Every keen gardener will be feeling creative and dream of their own garden winning a gold medal.

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In my short story ‘Recycling’, Amanda DuPres’ love of plants leads to Pierrefonds  Close being in lock down. Read it in

 

 

 

Lines On The Washing

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 1 Comment

Winter has the advantage of long dark evenings, but the risk of tripping over on the pavement – if you are nosey and walk with your head turned sideways to see into the windows of homes where they have not closed the curtains. I love seeing choice of colour schemes and furniture, signs of lifestyles; room full of toys, a cello and music stand or a wide screen television hung over the fireplace revealing to the whole street what they are watching.

Being on a train, coach on the motorway or upstairs on a double-decker bus has the extra advantage we can’t be seen spying on the lives of others; peering into their back gardens, watching a farmer walk his cows over a motorway bridge or busy shoppers ignoring a homeless person in a doorway.

When I was 21 and officially on my working holiday, with destination, career path and accommodation vague, I would look down from train or coach windows fascinated, sometimes envious of other people with their real lives. Going to work, pushing prams, shopping, gardening and hanging out the washing; putting washing on the line is one of the few domestic tasks we can observe, from the person leaning over their tiny balcony in a block of flats to a lone cottage on a hill, the wind ready to tear the sheets from their hands.

Hanging the washing up is my favourite domestic task. This is not a discussion about housework and who should do what. Clothes and bedding need to be washed, meals prepared and homes large and small cleaned; somewhere along the line someone has to do it and my favourite job is hanging out the washing. Yes I know towels come out of the tumble drier lovely and fluffy, but it’s hardly a spiritual experience.

When I am in my little garden hanging out the washing this is the real life I observed so long ago. The fact that I am out there means either I’m basking in the sun or being whipped by an exhilarating wind, either way enjoying nature. Looking up at the sky, observing the birds and tidying up the flowers are all part of the experience and an antidote to the internet; though I often grab my phone to take a picture of birds, flowers or clouds to put on Facebook or Instagram.

Of course you will know from books, films and television dramas that secret agents, detectives and important politicians never need to do the washing. But in my novel Brief Encounters of the Third Kind, Susan is a very ordinary woman in an ordinary London suburb. It is when she is in the garden hanging out the washing that something strange happens that will change her life.

Silly Season

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 4 Comments

2018 looks set to be as doom filled and gloom laden as 2017 and the actions of our leaders as silly and unbelievable as ever. Individuals feel powerless, but the beginning of a new year is the time for individuals to get their own lives in order, a more achievable goal perhaps. But what is taken seriously by one person might seem plain silly to their family or Facebook friends, the latter being the ones who will have to read ad nauseam about their lofty aims. If you became healthier and wealthier after Sober October, perhaps you will be inspired by Veganuary. While millions waste money on annual gym membership for one assessment, a few laps of the pool, a sit in the sauna and a go on the cross trainer that resulted in a pulled muscle, others might decide this is the year  they train for a marathon, or seven marathons in one week across Africa…

Why don’t we just have a silly season instead, to brighten up northern winters or celebrate southern summers. What would your sillutions be? To acquire more Facebook friends in North Korea or Antarctica, to take up guerrilla knitting and dress all the lampposts in your street or why not turn your house inside out; bring the garden indoors with artificial lawn, trees in pots, house rabbits and free range parakeets?

Or you could spend January in the world of fiction and enjoy strange surroundings and events without annoying those you live with. I hope to be busy writing, finishing my latest novel, which has some very strange events and penning a few short stories. In the meantime ‘Someone Somewhere’ will take you into spring and summer with two strange novellas and other weird tales.