In the bleak midsummer
Endless rain, Oystercatchers, arcane magical grimoires
‘Sweetcorn? TINY. Beans? TINY’ says a sauna friend. She comes from Hong Kong. I know what her name sounds like but I can’t spell it. She’s not impressed by the British summer, which is being the most British and least summer that it can be. Still, she’s doing better than me because not only are my tomatoes and courgettes TINY, but my beans were eaten by baby deer, who’s not a baby and can step over the fence these days. I need a better name for him, really. And a better fence.
The lettuce seeds didn’t grow and I assumed they were too old and bought a new pack but whatever was eating all the seeds grubbed out the few seedlings the grew, presumably while looking for some more seeds to eat. The peas went the same way. I can’t seem to catch a break this year.
In fact, I reviewed what I like about to the vegetable garden and its my perennial kale collection and the berries. Squirrels love strawberries and they’ll strip all the green ones off because they are spiteful little things (I sometimes think I don’t like squirrels because they have too many human characteristics) but they don’t care for raspberries. The raspberries (and the blueberries, and the rhubarb) simply grow themselves each year with very little input from me, plus raspberries are really expensive so it makes sense to grow them if you like them, which I do.
I decide the best thing is to get more perennials, more herbs, more fruit, less stress over veg I can buy for 50p in the supermarket. Thompson and Morgan had a free postage offer and I bought whatever fruit was on sale if it said it was easy to grow- three goji berries, two honeyberrys (not even sure what those are) and -and this is my favourite- a miniature mulberry. It has a tiny mulberry on it and everything. I planted them straight away, accompanied by my friend, Bobbin. Bobbin usually accompanies me round the garden incase I dig up something good, which is sensible because I unearthed two ant nests and apparently robins (did I mention Bobbin is a bird?) seem to like ant eggs.
The baby robins have fledged ( I know this because they keep getting stuck in the kitchen which is near their nest. Three times in one day- those tiny birds have a surprising amount of poo in them when they are scared) but I think the parents need feeding up after their young have bled them dry. I also dug up horrendous albino caterpillar grub, like a small leather jacket. For some reason I can’t bear the white ones though I suppose they are not much different to a caterpillar? I did what any responsible adult would do and shouted ‘bobbin!’ from a safe distance behind the greenhouse while he sorted that out. RIP grub.
Workings
This week my brain has not been braining as it should, and I have nothing much to say because I have not done much other than make a fairly solid attempt to watch all of Ted Lasso while I have 3 months of free Apple TV with my new iPad.
I’ve not listed the things I said I would, and I have produced no new work and this newsletter is mostly pointless, but I needed to tell someone that I saw an oystercatcher at the lake? I am very familiar with, and like, oystercatchers so I was happily watching - the long red beak poking the ground, the black and white body, the red legs, when I suddenly realised- why is there an oystercatcher on a golf course in the middle of Oxfordshire? Is it lost? Is it.. migrating? Am I mistaken believing oystercatchers are coastal?
One night in autumn I heard the familiar churring of a nightjar through my bedroom window - I say familiar because I used to live near the New Forest. They aren’t be familiar here, but what else sounds like a nightjar? Not much. It was a nightjar I’m sure, but it was in the wrong place, and so was this oystercatcher, for a small while. Birds are mysterious, and someone needs to explain.
The only triumph this week was I finally finished the Victorian photo album I bought from the car boot for a quid years ago. It is full of mistakes, and took forever because I wanted a red marbled paper for the inside, which is both hard to find and not cheap. You can imagine my excitement when I found this paper in broad canvas (my local art shop) for £2.50. It’s not perfect but neither is anything else to be honest.
I decided on a post bound book because, although they don’t lie flat which is annoying, they are by far the most convenient in terms of swapping pages in and out (I am a serial offender when it comes to ripping pages out of sketchbooks, and abandoning them when there are too many disappointing pages).
All I have to do now is decide what I’m going to use it for. I’ve cut less than half the maximum number of pages it can hold and there’s still a billion in there, which is a bit daunting, actually. Plus it’s a nice cover, I feel it should hold arcane manuscripts or something. Anyway, let me know your suggestions of things to put in there.
Always poetry...and bits of Nature with your work!
The sketchbook is GORGEOUS. And we get Oystercatchers in Pennine Lancashire, which is just about as far from the east coast as it is the west.