Category Archives: Blogging

Beehave Yourself!

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One of my greatest pleasures whilst tending the flowers out on our terrace is when a passing bumblebee bumps against my arm and I can feel his wings, and he doesn’t get nasty or upset because he perhaps senses that I’m not going to hurt him, or maybe even he knows that I’m his friend (we gardeners are rather fanciful!). Even the ordinary honey bees don’t seem to mind my presence and they often fly close enough for me to feel the movement of their wings in the air. They never sting me, not like wasps – I’m allergic to them (and they seem to know it for they harass me regardless of my pretence at nonchalance); luckily, I haven’t seen many wasps this year.

However, I’ve seen thousands of bees this year, quite recently in fact, and not one by one… Chris discovered them last Friday when he was hanging out the washing in the garden on the sea-side of our house; obviously looking for a new home in which to hibernate for the winter, the bees were buzzing in and around the loose soil all over the steep bank leading down to the railway line. Much as we love bees we weren’t too sure that we wanted our garden to be overrun by them so Chris called Graham, a bee-keeping acquaintance of ours who might have been interested in housing a homeless hive of honey bees.

“They aren’t honey bees,” Graham began, “they’re too small and they are already making homes in the soil. Also it would be too difficult to gather them, and they won’t be honey producers.

“Oh dear,” Chris and I were thinking together, having not yet come to terms with the idea of sharing our garden with so many hobos.

“But they are good pollinators,” smiled the bee enthusiast.

“How many do you think there are?” Chris inquired.

“Oh, it’s only a very small swarm – about four and a half thousand bees,” replied Graham.

Chris was hanging out the washing again this morning (I do help sometimes – really!) and he came back upstairs with something of a triumphant smile on his face.

“They are still there,” he announced proudly.

“And they didn’t sting you or get annoyed?”

“No, most of them don’t even have stings. I was looking them up on Google,” my husband admitted. “I think they are either digger bees or miner bees – not to be confused with a mynah bird.”

I went upstairs and returned with my phone camera, made a bee-line to the hive of activity and took a few photos for my blog readers. While taking shots of our bee-loved new residents I noticed our neighbours’ pampas grass, tall and beautiful against a background of blue sky and sea, and I laughed to myself. 

“Why are you laughing?” Chris asked.

“The pampas grass,” I giggled, “I was wondering if Adrian and Sonia know what it means… Maybe I should tell them… But…”

“Bee-have yourself!” said Chris.

So I’m not going to tell them. They’ll have to read my blog to find out. I’ll copy and paste an article on the subject just in case you’re in the dark.

Ah, what beautiful pampas grass!

Embarrassed dog-walkers pass by with eyes fixed ahead!

Exclusive: Pampas grass sales are falling because it is a secret signal for swingers

For decades it was a common feature of suburban front gardens throughout Britain, adding a touch of exoticism to more everyday native planting.

But an unfortunate association with liberal sexual practices appears to have heralded the end of pampas grass as a gardener’s favourite.

Plant sellers says sales have plummeted – in no small part due to the plant being regarded as a secret signal to passersby that its owners are happy to indulge in swinging.

Many nurseries have stopped stocking it entirely, and even large suppliers have seen numbers plummet, as buyers shun the plant for fear of what it means.

Palmstead Nurseries, which sells plants to garden designers for households, commercial gardens and public spaces, says the plant has fallen out of favour.

A decade ago the firm, based in Ashford, Kent, was selling an average of 550 of the plants every year. Annual sales fell to less than 500 five years ago and are now as low as 250.

The plant is one of the least popular of the company’s grass varieties, some of which are so in demand that it sells thousands of plants every year.

Nick Coslett, the company’s marketing manager, said it had fallen out of fashion in part because it was seen as a signal that swingers lived in a house.

He said: “It’s just not in fashion at the moment.

“I’ve got no evidence that it was ever actually used for that – I think it goes back to the fact that it was planted in people’s front gardens.

“But there is that connotation, unfortunately. It’s all part of that 1970s, kitsch feel.”

The plant’s association with swinging has been dismissed as a myth by pampas enthusiasts, but broadcaster Mariella Frostrup said she had inadvertently identified herself as a swinger by planting the grasses outside her Notting Hill home a few years ago.

Since the arrival of her two Cortaderia selloana plants, the presenter said she had been inundated with unwanted inquiries.

Writing on Twitter she said at the time: “Bought two and put them on my balcony. Neighbours have been swarming!”

Steve Dawson, a buyer for Crocus, the largest gardening website in the UK, said it now sold around 300 pampas grass plants a year – a fraction of the amount it sold of other grass varieties.

“A lot of people used to put it in their front gardens – I think people are probably a bit embarrassed about doing that now,” he said.

Another plant nursery, Worcester-based Bransford Webbs, said it had stopped selling pampas grass altogether over a decade ago, because sales figures were so poor.

The plant comes in several different varieties, some of which can grow to up to eight feet (2.4m) tall.  

Most nurseries which still sold them said they tended to sell the Pumila variety, which is a, smaller, “dwarf” version of the larger plant. It grows to around five feet (1.5m).

Pampas grass is native to south America and is named for the Pampas region, fertile lowlands covering Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, where they originally grew.

It is very hardy and can produce a significant number of seeds. This has led to the plant being seen as a weed in some countries.

In California, it is classed as an “invasive to avoid” plant, and people are discouraged from planting it in their gardens.

George Hillier, of the Hillier garden centre chain, which has 12 branches, said they had almost completely stopped stocking the plants due to low demand.

He said that embarrassment over the plant’s connotations could be a factor, but that its size and the difficulty of removing it was one of the main things putting gardeners off.

“They are very sharp and they’re very thick,” he said. “Once it’s in and really established, getting rid of it is a couple of days worth of work.”

 

Troll

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What is a troll?  Without going to Google I’ll tell you what I think best describes a troll and how to deal with it.

Like most little girls, I first became aware of trolls during my early childhood, when I was an avid reader and lover of fairytales. Trolls were the bloodthirsty beasts that patrolled, and lay in wait, in the dark area under the wooden bridge that the Billy Goats Gruff had to “trip-trap” over in order to get to the lovely green pastures on the other side. A troll was exactly as big and ugly as a particular child could conjure up in his or her imagination.

Now I’m not sure what modern day trolls look like but I know they exist. It really would be helpful if the trolls would come out of the shadows but that’s the nature of the beasts. I suspect, under scrutiny, they are outwardly ugly for an inner ugliness tends to betray itself in an unconscious sneer or an evil look; however, the ingenue, or even a worldly nice person, may not notice the artifice in the smile of an acquaintance. The aggressor may even appear to be a friend… or, alternatively, someone in the crowd who saw you at a village fete.

The “poison pen letter”, which has far more potential to be incriminating to a cowardly troll, has given way to the Internet as a means of delivering lies, implied threats and innuendos. What a boon for trolls! The Internet enables them to hide in anonymity under false names and bogus email addresses whilst they pounce on unsuspecting victims and inflict their vitriol.

We can all guess at a troll’s “raison d’être”  – jealousy, power (a deficiency of it) and revenge (for an imagined wrong) come to mind – or maybe they are simply mad or bad.

But what can a poor innocent victimised blogger do about it? You can put the libellous comment in your Trash box (to argue is to give credence to the nonsense), then you can write a blog post entitled “Troll” and hope that the troll reads it. Finally, you can imagine the troll, like Rumpelstiltskin, stamping her feet in fury, so hard that she stamps her way to the centre of the Earth… and then you laugh. Fairytales usually have happy endings.

One June

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After a night of disturbing dreams I awoke with a sick headache, not to mention some heartache as well. I downed some paracetamols and took a shower, but still I felt terrible. The shock, the disappointment and the guilt had caught up with me.

It wasn’t particularly early but the clouds hid the sun so I thought I’d go out for a cycle ride anyway – and it wouldn’t be too hot by the river. The Albert River is my favourite destination for a short cycle ride when I’m staying at Belivah. Not wishing to miss any of the beauty below, I walked my little red bike across the pedestrian bridge and, at length, turned onto the path leading down to the water. After parking my bike against a signpost I stood on the platform at the base of one of the huge concrete pillars supporting the bridge and I became lost in thought as I looked into the reflections on the surface of the river.

I thought of June – Mrs Conelly (as we called her until recent years) – whom I have known for all my life bar three months, because that’s how old I was when the Porch family moved up from Victoria to “The Sunshine State” of Queensland. I pictured Mrs Conelly in my mind as she was when I was a toddler on her lap – I didn’t know she was so young then but when you’re only two yourself even a twenty-eight year old looks quite mature! We always sat in the kitchen when Mum and I went across the road for a mid-morning cup of tea at Mrs Conelly’s and I used to love to watch her boil the kettle on her wood stove and go through the ritual of warming the teapot before putting in the leaf tea (no tea-bags in those days), and pouring the brew over a strainer into dainty bone china tea cups with saucers.

Mrs Conelly spoke in an Australian accent that lilted like a song and sometimes lulled me to sleep. She diagnosed my every illness, from hepatitis to appendicitis, and we Porches fondly referred to her as “Doctor Conelly”. She loved her pets, in particular, Aussie the talking galah , who was older than me and died of old age only two years ago; and we children loved Bingo the calf who did not live beyond adulthood (I wasn’t hungry the day Mrs Conelly brought over some steak!).

The only sadness at leaving Molle Road in Gumdale for wonderful Wynnum when I was ten was the parting from our dear neighbour and friend. Still, we kept in touch with visits and later with letters when we moved to England. And Mrs Conelly’s place, wherever that may have been in successive years, was always a place to visit whenever any of the Porches returned to their homeland. I was planning to see June this very week…

All alone, down on the Albert River, tears pricked my eyes. Then the sun came out and I phoned Chris, who is in England at the moment but will be joining me soon. He was still up though it was past his midnight.

“Perhaps it’s for the best that you didn’t see her – not at that stage, Darling,” he said.

I cycled back to Leah Street. My headache had passed and the memories of June, having reached a good long life well into her eighties, eased the heartache somewhat.

Lucky in Love

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While I was out brushing up the leaves this morning I decided that it was high time I wrote another blog post but I couldn’t think of anything particularly funny or newsworthy to write about. Then I began to think about recycling – maybe I could find a funny post from years ago and let it do the rounds again; my long-term followers might have forgotten about it (although I don’t know how if it was that hilarious!) and the more recent visitors to my site could have the pleasure of reading the post afresh. The first one of the best old posts to come to mind was “Truth and Triumph”, a funny little story about an unusual board game of the same title. One thought leads on to another and soon I was thinking about Chris, and I suddenly realised that I fell in love with him almost exactly twenty years ago…

I could not have known at that point that Chris would be the one, perfect man, for me because I was old enough to know that perfection does not exist. I had had handsome, intelligent and wonderful boyfriends before but something had always been missing… none of them enjoyed playing games as much as I do, and some of them not at all. I’m not talking about tricky psychological games or games of hockey or football – more like Scrabble, Chinese Chequers, Rummikub or Backgammon (I wonder why it’s called Backgammon?). Well, unrealistic as it seemed, I had held out for an awfully long time. And yet, when Chris asked me to marry him I didn’t ask the burning question…

Twenty years on I’m delighted to say that whenever Chris wants to get into my good books he asks if I want to play a game, and these days it’s most likely to be Backgammon because it’s so quick and exciting. We play on an ancient board given to us by our dear Egyptian friend Am, who sadly died only weeks after he introduced us to the game and presented us with the ornate box with mother of pearl marquetry. We love the box, the game and the reminder of Am every time we open the box. Chris often says, “I wonder what Am would think if he knew how much we love his game.” And I say, “He’s probably smiling down at us.” I love that Chris feels like this – I’m not just lucky at games, I’m lucky in love.

And here is the shortened and modified version of “Truth and Triumph”:

Truth and Triumph

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On Sunday Mary, my sister, returned from her weekly car-boot-sale outing with our Mum and said….

“I have a little something for you and Chris, Sally – it cost me nothing.” (Naturally it was in her car- boot!). “You and Chris love games – don’t you?”

And we do, at least I do, and Chris obliges me by joining in, otherwise there would be no-one for me to play with. So last night when Chris asked if I wanted to play Chinese Chequers, I surprised him by suggesting that we play Mary’s Truth and Triumph game instead. Chris pulled a face but I was so keen that he didn’t have the heart to refuse. The box was like an old treasure chest, brown as oak, and had “Truth and Triumph” printed in gold capitals in the centre – nothing else, no indicator as to what could be inside – and the edges and corners of the box were worn and  a bit ragged. Chris left it to me to open it – well, I was the keen one – but we were both interested to know what was inside. Firstly, there was a stiff, quite nice quality board (so it was a board game) with a dusting of powdery mould on the back (not used that much then…), underneath that was the instruction manual, and beneath that four brown boxes with gold lettering – one was entitled WISDOM, the next THE CHURCH, (I began to think it a little different to the games I’m used to ….) THE LIFE OF CHRIST, and finally (as if I needed any more confirmation about the theme), the last box said THE OLD TESTAMENT; then there were the counters, the score cards and the dice.

“Perhaps it’s a game for nuns or old priests,” I suggested.

“Let’s play Chinese Chequers,” Chris suggested.

“Come on, let’s give it a go for a few minutes,” I encouraged, “you should be better at it than me because your granddad was a minister.”

Chris usually reads the instruction guides for everything in the house but on this occasion he let me do it because I was the one who wanted to play. I hate reading instructions so we ended up playing our own version of it (good job too, otherwise it would have taken all night!). It transpired that the game is very similar to Trivial Pursuit but with a religious theme. I threw the dice first and landed on a LIFE OF CHRIST question card.

“What kind of place was Christ’s tomb situated in?” Chris asked.

“A graveyard.”

“No, what KIND of a place?”

“A nasty place, out in the wastelands, away from the metropolis… a sort of cave… with a big rock in front?” I said everything I could think of.

“No, I don’t mean that. What kind of land?”

“Barren land – very rocky?”

“Definitely not rocky,” Chris laughed (he alluded to Rocky, the handsome Texan in my book), “It starts with a G…”

“A GGGarden – the hanging gardens of Babylon!”

“No, the gardens of…?”

“Gethsemane?”

And so we played on for over an hour, helping each other through the difficult questions. Perhaps my favourite question was….

“What did John the Baptist wear?”

“Hemp” (I thought that sounded sufficiently coarse and uncomfortable for such a pious man), “or sackcloth, if you prefer?”

“Nope”

“It can’t be something nice like cotton, it must be an animal skin – goats wool?”

“No, but you’re on the right track,” urged Chris.

“Lion skin!”

“No, it begins with a ‘c’ – come on, ka… ka… camel…?”

“Camel skin!”

“No, silly girl, it’s camel hair!”

“Of course, everyone knows that!” I said.

In truth, I can’t remember any of the serious questions – they were way over my head; in triumph, I answered two questions correctly by guesswork; in disgrace, I answered one by cheating – I saw the answer on the other side of the card!

The wear and tear on the box must either have occurred through overuse of the surface as a good push off for Tiddlywinks or there is another scenario…

Picture, if you will, an evening at the nunnery. Young Sister Teresa Mary goes to the cabinet that stores all the  board games; in-between Scrabble and Cluedo is a brown box like a treasure chest, which is dark and mysterious (only the older nuns know what lies within); yet again Sister Teresa Mary slides the box half-out and looks around at the others (busy rug-making or sewing tapestries), and she asks, “Would anyone like to play Truth and Triumph for a nice change tonight?” All hands stop working and all eyes look horrified, but no-one dares to speak, except for Mother Superior who says, “Let’s save that for a special occasion, Sister, I’ve been looking forward to a good game of Scrabble all day – who’s for Scrabble?” There are sighs and coughs, and several nuns kiss their rosaries. Thank God for Mother Superior!

 

Bursting With Love

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Sometimes, don’t you just feel like you’re bursting with love? Lots of things can cause it – like holding a new born baby, or being told the most wonderful news when you had dared not hope for the best; or it could happen when you’re out with your husband or lover on an unpromising day, weather-wise, and the sun comes out for you, filling your private little world with the golden shades of autumn. In the latter case you squeeze each other’s hand and say, “Isn’t it beautiful?” and “The sun came out especially for us!” .

I remember a time many years ago when Chris and I took our girls to a Dartmoor beauty spot called Fingle Bridge. The girls had gone off on their own to explore and Chris beckoned me to sit beside him on a very friendly looking log for two. From our comfy vantage point we had a beautiful view of the river and the sun playing on the trees on the other side, but, best of all, we felt it was for us alone.

“I’m bursting with love for you,” said Chris.

No-one had ever said that to me before and I nearly burst with love back.

Last weekend, after having a lovely visit with our son and his wife in Brighton, Chris suggested that we return to a pretty little spot called Friday Street; it’s a place filled with pleasant childhood memories for Chris – his father loved it there. We parked in a forest car park and walked the rest of the way although it wasn’t really necessary to use the car park as we were the only people there apart from the dwellers of the handful of quaint cottages – puffs of smoke from chimneys informed us of life within.

The day had begun misty but, as we emerged from the dark of the tree-lined lane, the sun came out and lit up the forest behind the lake ahead, and the golden green forest reflected on the water like a painting. Still holding hands, we entered the forest paved with gold and we both felt it – we were bursting with love.

What About Rainforests?

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AUSTRALIAN RAINFOREST ART AND AIRBNB

Are there some wood nymphs on the forest floor?

Are there some wood nymphs on the forest floor?

As some of you out there know, Chris and I have been really hard at work over this summer with our “Honeymoon Suite” Airbnb lettings, which have eaten up an awful lot of our time and energy.  Now, with winter just around the corner, our season has finally finished and I can at last get back to being a proper full-time artist rather than a strange hybrid artistic landlady! Of course, come early Spring next year, the new season starts and we’ll be back at the helm with the Airbnb routine, which is actually quite fun, if a bit tiring!  But in the meantime, it’s back to my real work, thank goodness. Incidentally, if any of my readers are interested in our lovely Honeymoon suite for a few memorable days overlooking the sea in beautiful accommodation, just Google “AirBnb Dawlish”, and our place should pop up at or very near the top of the list. You’d love it!

In the meantime, I have full-on work of a solely artistic nature to do. It’s high time that I actually got around to producing a brand new Australian Rainforest series of oil paintings, and I’m greatly looking forward to doing lots of research and assembling some fresh material to get going on this exciting project. And should I tire of painting with greens (perish the thought) I may turn to blue and paint some more of my Aussie seascapes for a change of palette (a change is as good as a rest). I’ve started with a small specimen Rainforest painting, and you may see a few interesting shapes appearing amongst the trees – is that a wood nymph or two?. I reckon so…. Please let me know if you think I’m barking up the wrong tree!

“R and M” – A New Oil Painting for Newly-weds

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ramndeep-and-mark

“R and M” , Oil on Canvas – 9.5″ x 7″

 

 

 

 

 

Poor Internet, an accident and poor health have kept me off the radar for a spell… but I’m back with a strong signal, the fall is now just a memory provoked by the odd twinge in ankle and knee, the cough is less frequent, the hearing is returning and the tooth has a temporary filling. Luckily, I could still paint! Today I finished a small commission fora lovely couple. I hope they like it.

The Cavewoman Diet Nearly Four Months On

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If you read my blog post, “The Cavewoman Diet” (published on the twenty-eighth of June this year), you may well have been wondering how I fared; indeed, you might imagine that by now I have achieved my goal and am currently looking like Raquel Welch and running around in a fur bikini. Well… I was terribly good and and the weight dropped off, one whole pound, and I thought I was on my way. I fought all manner of temptations for at least three days – or was it two?  By then my body had realised that I was trying to trick it into shedding weight and it wouldn’t give an inch! At last, after a great deal of self-denial and blue berries, which were rather expensive (the blackberries weren’t out yet), I must admit that I gave up and went onto another, less severe, diet.

Nearly four months on I feel obliged to report that I had a change of heart regards my role-model, which changed my line of thinking. And speaking of lines…. after seeing my screen idol Raquel Welch at seventy-something being interviewed on television I decided that, although beautiful and less lined than thirty years ago, she was a little too thin and “plastic” for my liking. Besides, what’s wrong with a more natural look?

Yes, I am thrilled to be able to tell you that my current new diet fad has been incredibly successful. The “FAST Diet” is the natural way to becoming the new natural you. Don’t worry, there is no fasting involved, nor, indeed, is it particularly speedy. “FAST” is an acronym for Fatty Arbuckle’s Sister Tubby, not to be confused with “The BBC Diet” (Billy Bunter’s Culinary Diet). The diet requires you to avoid bread, butter, potatoes and all sugary foods including cakes and biscuits, unless, of course, there is nothing else in the house, or you’re dining out, or just plain starving.

My new role model, Tubby Arbuckle, is pleasantly chubby, will outlast Raquel in times of famine, and doesn’t need plastic surgery because her pretty round face is filled out like a moon.

Confidentially, (if that’s possible with a blog), I hope not to become quite as rotund as Tubby or her brother Fatty Arbuckle! And if you’re unfamiliar with the name Arbuckle, Fatty Arbuckle was a silent movie star.

 

Falling….

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All my efforts at trying to fall to sleep last night were futile for a long time – I couldn’t do so because I kept thinking of falling, and how late it was. That always makes it worse.

I tried to think of nice things (as advised by Maria in “The Sound of Music”) and, instead of “Raindrops on roses”, I envisioned Sacha Distel singing “Raindrops keep falling on my head…). After that little surprise (I never think of Sacha Distel in the daylight hours!) the lovely film “Falling in Love” (a more modern version of “Brief Encounter” – but with a happier ending – starring Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro) came into my mind. But that didn’t send me to sleep for I was soon thinking of Marlene Dietrich singing “Fallink in love again…. can’t ‘elp it….”. It’s funny what comes into your mind at two in the morning when you can’t sleep – isn’t it?

In this instance perhaps it wasn’t so very strange though; you see, on my way to bed an hour and a half earlier I had noticed a downstairs light was still on and, in my haste in the dim light, I mistook the bottom step for the floor and I went flying, or falling, to be precise… I went to bed, not with a nice hot water bottle, but one of those frozen bricks that are used for keeping food cold.

Now, after a painful day of hobbling around – I can’t say which is worse, my left knee or right ankle – my feet are up on a chair as I write this blog post. Chris has gone to bed ahead of me, it’s late and now I’ll close. It’s so late that I expect not to be disturbed, as last night, by all the racket in my head and I hope to fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

 

 

 

 

 

Maneaters Beware

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I had a little laugh to myself today when something on the radio reminded me of a funny conversation which took place in a swimming pool some time ago.

I had just inched my way down the pool steps (well, eight-inched) until I was standing in cold water up to my waist, and I wasn’t too keen on a sudden total immersion, when I noticed several small flies floating on the surface. Strangely, perhaps to you, seeing the dead flies made me quite gleeful.

“Geoff,” I called out to my brother-in-law who was on a sunlounger, “I wonder if you would be kind enough to find me the poolnet.” (Yes, I always ask in a grovelling way when I don’t want to get out of a pool and find the poolnet for myself.)

“I’d much rather catch the flies than swim, I said to Chris, who was in the pool already and very well aware that my alternative to swimming on this occasion was a ploy to delay the full immersion.

“And to think I thought you were looking forward to having a swim with me,” my husband joshed.

Geoff obligingly brought me the net and began to chuckle:

“Well Sally,” he began, “I always knew you were a Venus, but I didn’t know that you were a Venus Fly-catcher!”

I knew he was being suspiciously complimentary, still it was better than being called a maneater!