Barefoot in the park

Tess is now  two and a third and I liked her wee poetic comment in the park today. She and Hugh were barefoot on the grass and when we came to walk on the concrete path, she said, mummy I hear my feet. I said, you hear your feet, Tess? Yes, she replied, like a pigeon.

-C

The gardening programme in my head

The only time I get a 'run' at the garden is when Francis takes the kids out on a weekend morning. You might think you could garden with kids playing verdantly around you in a pastoral utopia. Apparently not. Instead they throw muck, complain about it being 'too shiny' and then whinge for TV. Even though Hugh has out-grown Mr Bloom's Nursery (a kids' gardening show) he would rather stay indoors and watch it than, well, actually garden for more than 7 minutes.

So, I know very little about gardening and I'm making it up as I go along. Hence my surprise at the new-onset gardening show in my head. I was mentally narrating to the 'viewers' as I went about each cultivation task. When you cut this bush back, it may look a bit bare but, don't worry, you'll be rewarded with fresh growth next year. I began to take liberties. I'm edging the lawn here with this handy tool, but if you want a really straight line, you should mark it out with string first.

Then I thought about my blog readers too. And I realised that my infrequent blogging rate is directly related to the infrequent daytime head-space. My mind rarely gets a chance to meander. What a good word meander is. Anyway, today my mind enjoyed stretching like a sun-warmed cat, while I stood on a plastic garden chair and lopped at  hedges. Such is life on a good day.

-C

Slugs too trusting

I never know what to do with the nightly explosion of slugs in my garden. They cause conflict in the 'Never Be Cruel To Animals' part of my brain. I go out to try and kill them with a spade, but they are so trusting. The security light comes on and their big antenna - or are those their eyes (?) just reach out further. Exploring.  Saying hello. It just feels so wrong to bap them.  And yet, if I don't they will eat every lettuce, broad bean and strawberry they can find. And the hosta....well, it gets skeletal.

I'm stalling any squeamish massacres by surfing online for effective slug control online. Notice my euphemism there. Control. Poisoning them seems even worse. If only I could herd them all into some kind of holiday camp for slugs. Snail World. Slugs on sun loungers with cocktails and all the rotting vegetation they can eat. Just don't let them come back.

-C

Same old, great old.

Right, that's it. I'm still here. I was skulking and hiding, but a couple of kind readers have prompted me out of lurking. It had gotten to the point that I wouldn't even click on my blog pages, so embarrassed was I, that they were no longer updated.

Everything is mostly the same, but in a good way. In a great way. I still savour my health like only the recovered can. The kids are growing up happy and well-cared for. Hugh is 3 and a half, Tess has just turned 2. Nice Man is still nice to me.

Part of my hiding is due to my ambivalence about the way the Internet can take over your life: hours of your time can fall down the hole that is, 'Just checking my email/facebook/twitter feed'.

Recently I was at a wedding where there was a designated twitter page and guests were tweeting from one side of the room to the next. Some people love that stuff. The bride and groom were happy cyber geeks. Fair do's, and 'them to their fancy and me to my nancy', but frankly, I'm happier in real time, rather than parallel web time.

That's also a vain way of saying that this ubiquitous web-stickiness drives me nuts. Sometimes  I am tempted to poke Nice Man with a random gardening tool if he tweets when we're on one of our average family-fun days out: something like buying emulsion at B&Q or getting lost at motorway junctions. Here's a recent article by journo, Graham Spiers, saying how his wife gets grumpy when he gets carried away tweeting.

Well, what else have I got to say? So much that I don't know where to begin. If I can resist the coy urge to hide again, I will try and see what gives in future posts. One thing at a time.

Tomorrow night I'll head out to my new local bookgroup. We read Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman. I loved it much more than I thought I would. I was always a believer in equality - ie a feminist, but the book has opened my eyes to so many parts of life where we need to nuture that equality. When something breaks around the house, Tess will say, 'man fix it?' Yes, I say, or maybe a lady.

-C