When It’s Too Cold To Go To The Field…

..Ignore the washing up, forget the admin, whack the music up and get the bead box out.

Hyacinths – great for headdresses, napkin rings or just draping around the place. And procrastination, natch.

Blimey, It’s Cold

From vest top to 18-layers-and-still-shivering in a swift eight days.

I managed about four hours at the field today before I started to worry that the intense pain in my fingers might be because the ends had actually come off. (Never has anybody taken their gloves off more gingerly.) But I’m not complaining. The brilliant January weather – dry days, and soil that’s damp but not frozen – has allowed me to really get cracking with the organising and tidying stuff that usually gets pushed aside until… Well, next year.

In the polytunnel, I have weeded and top-dressed the beds and washed down the walls. Let me repeat that in case you failed to stop and accord that last bit  the awe it deserves.  I have washed down the walls! Just like they tell you to in the books!! (Pause for gasps.) Well, on one side anyway. The side where all the pots are and the junk’s all shoved under the staging will have to wait cos that’s probably going to be really hard work and entail me getting down on my knees amongst all the gunk and god knows what sort of dead bodies are behind it all and it can’t hurt to let things fester surely…

Outside, I’m gradually working down the rows, weeding and top dressing  with my beautiful “dump compost” and banging the stakes in nice and firm again. It’s so pleasing. I can’t show you any pictures of it at the moment  because it’s not quite there yet but,  if I do get it all done, be assured that there will be plenty of tidy-straight-row porn for the anal retentives amongst you.

And on a different note, the hyacinths in the polytunnel (Exhibit A),  are not as far on as the ones outside (Exhibit B – sorry it’s so out of focus but my hands were so numb I could only push the shutter on my phone by sort of lunging at it). Same batch, planted up the same day. What’s that about?

Exhibit A

Exhibit B - try squinting

Get Weaving

About half an hour’s drive north from here and you suddenly hit the Somerset Levels. As the Blackdowns and the Quantocks peter out, the landscape changes dramatically. I went on a balloon flight there once. It’s like the land’s been planned on graph paper – flat squares of land intersected by a network of rills, leats, rhynes – whatever your local word for them – and, yes, completely level.

I popped up to Weston Zoyland on Friday, partly so I could say, “I’ve been to Weston  Zzzoyland” a lot but mostly to visit Musgrove Willows. If you want to weave willow, now’s the time to do it. It’s just been cut and is beautifully bendy. Another couple of months and it will start to dry out and you’ll need to soak it for days on end to get it pliable again – and, frankly, who has a bath long enough?

I weave wreath bases with mine. If I had the money and the time, I’d weave hurdles to use as beautiful windbreaks in the field. Sigh… One day.

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet

Lately I have been wondering whether to start a Twitter account for the business. My initial thought when Twitter first took off was that it really wasn’t for me – partly based on the fact that  my life is actually quite dull (the thought of having to come up with interesting things to report on a regular basis seemed a chore I could do without), partly based on the fact that I have no idea how to use my phone for email and  so if I ever did come up with something interesting to report the chance of my being in front of a computer was small, and partly based on the fact that I’m slightly obsessive by nature and was afraid I’d end up not getting any work done because I was constantly checking my Twitter feed.

But then, spurred on by Higgledy Ben’s budding Twitter friendship with the great Ms Raven (and her long list of potential followers-cum-customers) and, after a bit of a browse, realising that a couple of friends from college had some very impressive contacts these days, I started to reconsider.

This week, I’ve been looking at it intermittently, checking out a few friends’ and interesting people’s feeds and trying to make a decision. At one point I searched for JW Blooms to see if anybody else was using it as their moniker and instead it came up with a couple of tweets recommending me. Hey! Suddenly it’s looking more tempting…

But I’ve also found nothing of real interest – vaguely interesting stuff, yeah, but nothing that has seemed like a good return on the amount of time that slightly-obsessive-I would undoubtedly end up putting into it. On the other hand, I don’t want to be left behind or miss out on a great marketing tool. Most people getting married are young. If their way of finding a wedding florist is to tweet “Anyone know a good florist in Somerset?”, do I want to miss out on the chance of someone saying, “Yeah, check out @jwblooms”?

I really can’t make up my mind.

Anybody?

PS I know it’s been the most perfect weather for photos this week, and I know I’ve been going on about how glorious it has been in the polytunnel, but I’ve failed to take a single photo, so apologies that the blog is looking a bit dull. Tomorrow, if the weather holds.

Just Round The Corner

Outside, the ground was frozen but inside the polytunnel it was 22 degress today. Oh, the joy of working in just a vest top! (Well, not just a vest top – that would be weird.)

I want one over my house.

A Good Winter

I took a brief break from the weeding today to look around at the field (that makes it sound like a rare occurence – it’s not) and thought that this winter hasn’t been so bad. Despite a few problems with Christmas wreath deliveries, the snow wasn’t actually too much of an inconvenience and, apart from yesterday, the rain has been ignorable. The sky was bright, bright blue today and the sound of light aircraft and birdsong made it feel quite spring-like.

“Yep, it’s been a good winter,” I thought. Then wandered off to see if I could find anybody to tow my van out the mud.

Dahlia Envy

Photo: Sarah Raven

Today I got my Sarah Raven spring catalogue. Every season, I greet the catalogue with glee, not allowing myself to peek at it until I have the time, paper and pen needed to work my way through it carefully, drinking in the stunning images, fantastic colours and idyllic settings. And I love it – in case you’re reading, Sarah, I really do – it’s just gorgeous. If I had a catalogue, I would want it to look just like that.

But it also makes me feel a bit rubbish.

I used to buy Country Living magazine every month, but after a couple of years I stopped. I’d realised that all it was doing was making me feel inadequate. In the same way that young girls look at fashion models and come away feeling fat, I was looking at the apparently perfectly tasteful lives in Country Living and concluding that my life was lacking. Where was my lime-rendered Georgian farmhouse? Where was my stone barn with rose-filled courtyard? Where was my Shaker-style parterre with  tumbling-locked children scampering about in Boden?

Realistically, I knew that ten years ago, when my garden was no more than a few pots outside the back door, I would have felt like a Lottery winner to be given the 100-ft garden I now take for granted, and even this time last year, before I knew I would be able to expand the flower field, knowing that I would end up with the space I have  now would have kept me grinning for days. So why aren’t I happy with that?

Well, actually I am.  I’ve been to Sarah Raven’s place and, while it’s really lovely, it’s not half as amazing as the pictures would have you believe. And to be honest, even though every bone in my body may be aching for absolutely every single one of the flowers she sells, who has the time to keep on top of all that staking? Would I really want to begin each day tying in 80ft of sweet peas? Nah!

One day, my stocks will have built up to a point where I look at the field and think, “Yes! Done!” Then, of course, I will start yearning for my own smallholding, then a farm, then… Well, that’s a long way off. In the meantime, I might treat myself to a few prize specimens (Those dahlias! Gorgeous!), then quietly put the catalogue aside and spend ten minutes looking at my lovely polytunnel. Who could want more?

It’s A New Dawn, It’s A New Day…

 

A very happy New Year to all my readers and customers!*

And a big thank you for the support and encouragement you’ve all been so generous with over the last year. It makes a big difference.

I’ve had a week or so where I haven’t really thought much about the business. Replying to enquiries, getting out the odd quote, occasionally checking for snow or mice damage – that’s about all I’ve managed and, although relaxing, it’s felt strangely disorientating not having tasks constantly rattling round my brain.

One thing that did stubbornly stay on my mind, however, was my accounts, which have to be finished and submitted by the end of this month if I’m not to be fined. “Do accounts!” has been moved from the bottom of each day’s To Do list since the beginning of September, and yesterday – Halle-bloomin-lujah! – I finally crossed it off the list.  Actually it’s not that bad a task once you get stuck into it, and it certainly focuses the mind. You can see where you spent too much, where you should have spent more, what was good value, what was a waste and what you’d forgotten you had lurking somewhere at the back of the shed. Most importantly, it also really helps with those New Year’s resolutions.

This year’s? MAKE A PROFIT! Everything else pales really.

* The picture has no particular relevance – just nice to remember a time when there was colour!