Category: Small Spaces

Making Plans and Finding Focus

Thursday 14 May 2020 10.00pm

Since the idea popped into my head recently, of writing about how my garden became what it is today, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and realising how much more of a story there is behind it; or to be more precise, how many stories.

I really hadn’t thought about it before, but much of the story of my life for the past 25 years or so is written in my garden. Highs and lows. Life and death. Love and loss. Friends and lovers. Successes and failures. Battles won and lost. They’re all there; all have formed the garden into the place it is now. 

The more I’ve let the idea percolate, the more stories keep coming to mind, and it’s paved the way to a new focus for my Patreon page.

The big picture of “seeing if I can make a living through writing and drawing” still applies, but just for now – while the world is in crisis and I for one am very much locked down – I want it to reflect the focus on one particular project.

So I’ve changed the description of my Patreon to “…creating a story about a tiny garden”, and altered what I’m offering for the different tiers, to reflect a new – albeit perhaps temporary – plan.

It’s still “using my writing and drawing skills” but now to create a book about my garden, that in turn tells a bit of the story of my life, and in particular highlights how good things can grow out of times that seem only bad.

First I’m going to create a timeline of all the changes that took this small outside space from just two plain strips of grass, open to the passing world, to the enclosed, semi private and secure garden full of beautiful, fragrant, colourful planting, with seating and working and storage areas, that it is today. I’ll be making notes as I go about the life events that prompted the changes – the wishes, the dreams, the hopes, and the fears. Digging out photos, and making drawings and design plans for each stage.

When all the planning is complete, I’m going to write the stories, chapters telling the life of the garden, with those bits of my life that influenced its growth woven in. I’ll turn the rough sketches into finished illustrations and use image editing programs and publishing programs on the computer to pull it all together and produce a book layout.

Finally I shall set about seeing if I can get the whole thing published.

For me it will be a journey of remembering and it won’t always be easy, but for the reader I intend for it to be something very different, full of creative solutions, practicalities and a fair sprinkling of triumph of hope over adversity! Something that’s needed now more than ever.

While this is is not going to be the answer to the “How do I make a living …?” problem – let’s be brutally honest, this is not going to be the next Harry Potter or make my fortune – it may however lead to other things. Who knows.

For now I’m writing it for my patrons. I can’t over state how much the support I receive over on Patreon is helpIng to motivate me and keep me accountable, and how immensely grateful I am for it.

I’m very excited about this little project – it feels as if this is the book I’ve been meant to write all along, I just didn’t know it until now.

A Little Early Morning View From Outside My Garden

Thursday 7 May 2020. 11:50am

I’m getting up very early at the moment in order to water and tend the troughs and tubs that are outside the front of my garden. They border the pavement, and as the road is very much a pedestrian thoroughfare, particularly with the footpath to the little shop at the far end, I don’t feel safe to be out there during most of the day or evening.

With the limitations on being able to look after them, and of course no money to spare, I haven’t added any colourful bedding to the front troughs and pots as I usually do, but am letting them do their own thing with the perennials that are already there, and the odd things that have self seeded. I’m a big fan of self seeding plants!

The stocks along the outside of the hedge are sort of semi self seeded, having had a little assistance from me by shaking them along the border over the last summer and winter as they produced their seeds. I’m aiming to get them growing all the way along, and have just shaken some more in the remaining gap, so fingers crossed they’ll be popping up later this year.

With my garden very much my focus at the moment, I’ve been giving thanks for all that I’ve done over the years to give it as much of an air of seclusion and privacy as possible; so important at this time. I’m going to be running a little series of posts for my Patrons, looking back to the very start when all that was out there was a couple of very tiny strips of open grass bisected by a short straight concrete path from the pavement to the front door. I’m digging out old photographs, and drawing up ‘floor plans’ of the various stages of the garden’s development.

If you would like to follow the journey that my garden’s taken over the past 25 years or so, hop over to Patreon and sign up. I’m opening the posts to all tiers, so whatever you feel you’re able to give will unlock them.

Meanwhile, here’s a little excerpt from the Patreon video I made first thing this morning, showing some of the pavement side of the garden, before the rest of the world was out and about.

Finding Delivery Solutions As Mail Doesn’t Really Arrive By Snail

Wednesday 6 May 2020 10.15pm

I’m gradually settling in to this strange new world, and not feeling the weight of the anxiety and fear resting on me quite so heavily. I’m well stocked now with essentials – good because it means I don’t need to panic over huge deliveries, and all the washing and quarantining they entail.

My entrance path is rapidly becoming even more overgrown than usual, and delivery drivers have been looking in disbelief when I’ve called out to them, pointing to the entrance.

‘It’s very narrow!”, they cry, hefting great wide shallow plastic crates stacked with carrier bags. “I know! “Sorry!”, I call back, “I have no way of getting rid of garden waste at the moment, so it just has to be left to grow I’m afraid. Sorry.”, I repeat. But I’m not at all sorry really. If passers by are dissuaded from venturing onto my property at the moment, that’s all to the good.

The one comment that does strike a chord though, and even in normal times it’s repeated by everyone who encounters my semi-hidden, and undeniably narrow-ish, entrance path, is a slightly sarcastic, “I bet the postman loves you!”. Well, no, probably I’m not his favourite customer, especially when it is, or has been, raining. And when the broom is covered in flowers. And when the dying flower heads are abandoning their branches even without being brushed against. And when the bees are enjoying the lavender underneath…

Since the very early days of the virus threat, I’ve sealed over my letterbox – not wanting ANYTHING entering the house, even for a moment, that hasn’t been either quarantined or thoroughly washed. We’ve been blessed with mostly dry days, so I’ve got round this by placing a large open topped cardboard box on the path, with a note inside to “Please place post in here”. That was ok while the entrance was still accessible, and on dry days, but I knew it was only a temporary solution, and I’d need to come up with something more sustainable.

Right at the start I bought a cheap wall mounting post box online, to accommodate for wet days, but hesitated to fit it to the wall by the front door, recognising that would still entail the postman battling with the broom. What I needed was some way of fitting the post box nearer the pavement. However, there was nothing to fix it to, and I still needed to get at it to remove the post; the problem seemed unsolvable. Then I had a brainwave.

Gazing out of the upstairs window my eyes alighted on my mum’s old sundial. I’d removed the pointy bit last year, that created the necessary shadow to tell the time, so the top was relatively flat, and being cast iron I knew it was quite heavy. On close inspection I realised it had a hole already in the top where the pointy thing had been bolted on – that got round any need to try to drill through the cast iron, and I began to feel it might just do the trick.

With a bit of thinking through, I realised I would need to raise the post box slightly from the top of the sundial, so that the drain holes already drilled in the base could do their job. A short chunk of wood left over from one of the legs of the sink stand that I made last summer took care of that, and the design was set.

Two extra holes drilled in the base of the post box allowed me to screw it to the small chunk of wood, and the hole already in the sundial top, with the addition of a couple of large washers, accepted a screw that then secured the wood to the sundial. Job done. Now, where to place it?

I chose a position inside the front hedge, near enough to the front door that it could be picked up by the security camera, but still on a narrow part of the border so I could reach it from this side of the hedge too. Then I discovered it was too short for the flat top of the sundial to rest on top of the hedge. Luckily there was already a (empty) pot sitting in a pretty convenient place inside the front hedge, so I ‘screwed’ it down a bit more firmly into the earth, popped its saucer on top, and stood the sundial-postbox on it. And “voila!”.

I’m hoping the whole thing will be firmly seated and heavy enough to withstand any strong winds because, providing I don’t have to actually stake it to the ground, I can simply swivel the sundial around in order to unlock the postbox and remove the post.

I’m happy to say the postman yesterday didn’t even hesitate, he just paused as he walked past and popped the post in. I then swivelled the whole sundial round and unlocked the box to remove the post (with gloved hands of course!), and felt an absurd sense of satisfaction at a problem solved.

Oh, and I realised a practical solution for deliveries is to direct them to be taken beside the car to the top of my grandmother’s old trolley that is bordered by a low ‘fence’ but accessible from both sides.

So short of actually building a moat and a raisable drawbridge, I’m pretty unlikely to get unwanted visitors, and as wanted visitors aren’t allowed at the moment, life in my garden has become restful again.