life, in snippets

I don’t like gardening. But this year, in this house, I’m trying to keep a garden alive.

The previous owners of the house clearly got too busy? too bored? to look after the gardens properly. Last year, we spent a week or so basically ripping up everything that looked too dead to survive on it’s own (along with Reiver). We realised, while doing it, that someone at some point had loved those gardens, a lot. They were well planted, well maintained, and then pretty much ignored for a couple of years prior to Tobermory and I moving in. That was all well and good, but then.. well, winter, plus various other things meant that I pretty much completely ignored Outside except for a cursory attack of the lawnmower periodically.

Unsurprisingly, this meant that most of the gardens have been colonised by the lawn, and in fact look better than the ACTUAL lawn right now. For some reason unknown to me, as I don’t speak gardening well enough, the lawns have decided they’d rather be mossy and crap, and the grass has taken up residence where it doesn’t get mowed. Anyway. That’s this summer’s problem, buying some grass seed and trying to get it to look like grass not long moss.

There are three gardens out front. Two of them were very sensibly (by previous owners) covered in weedmat and rocks. The grass has attacked there, which I periodically attack back. I think I need to remove all the rocks, re-mat, and then re-rock to properly solve that one. Again, a job for the summer. The remaining garden is very small, lives by the front door, and (other than the cat poop) mostly contains impatiens (aka, busy lizzy), which I am hoping will completely take over this summer and thereby remove my obligations to weed it.

Finally, there are gardens by our courtyard. As part of last summer’s destruction, we removed a very sad looking shrub from one, pulled out handfuls upon handfuls of impatiens, cut back camellias and ferns, and.. left it alone, pretty much. The busy lizzy have re-colonised one garden, we planted a couple of lavender bushes and a rosemary, which, well, they haven’t died, so I call that a win. The camellias have flowered gloriously, the ferns planted around said camellias mean we can’t see any dirt or weeds, so other than the occasional attack with loppers, I leave them alone.

The garden with the shrub turned out to contain a very tired rosebush (it’s subsequently died), and the remnants of what must have been a wonderful display of bulbs. Someone, at some point, spent a lot of time and care on these gardens; they’d planted bulbs to display over winter*, some to turn up in spring**, and some that hadn’t sprouted when I dug all the grass out of it a month ago.

Of course, I have kittens now, who view a freshly dug garden as a toilet that they must defile as rapidly as possible. Given that I intended it for a herb garden, this is a mild issue.

Today, Tobermory and I built a wee cage around the garden, with netting and garden-edging-stuff and a certain amount of miscommunication, as appears to be a pre-requisite for all DIY projects. I dug over it again, removed all the cat poo, removed more grass and root systems, turned in an enormous bag of something that alleges to be dirt specially designed for growing herbs in, and planted basil, chives, sage, coriander, parsley, and strawberries (with special strawberry fertiliser).

I don’t actually enjoy gardening much. Especially weeding, which I absolutely detest. But there’s something nice about a physical task having a good looking result, and something pleasant about getting my (gloved) hands into rich earth.

This summer, I’m going to try and keep just these few gardens alive. The ones that the lawn has taken over, I’ll cede to grass. I only have so much time available, and it’s easier to shove a lawnmower and line trimmer around than it is to pull handfuls of grass out every weekend. But the newly christened herb garden, that I will try and keep. I’m no green-fingered genius, but I want to try a new challenge.

* I can’t identify the flower, but they’re gorgeously vivid orange in the middle of winter. I’ve replanted the bulbs elsewhere in vague hopes they’ll survive.
** Also unidentifiable by me, but vaguely bell-like white flowers. Probably deadly common, but .. I don’t have green fingers, or a plant-cyclopaedia in my head.

In the throes of a grotty argument with Tobermory a few months back, I accused him of having no pride in our home. It was neither a fair nor a rational accusation, and there’s a world of context I’m leaving out (like the bit where I was being a complete and utter bitchqueen harpy). I never realised how hard settling in here would be, how difficult it would be for the two of us to adjust in our different ways to actually owning a home.

Daydreaming as a kid? I never, ever expected to be in a home I and my future Mr Right owned. Not unless we won the Lotto, or unless someone extraordinarily rich died, or we were about five hundred years old with a backbreaking mortgage.

I like this house. It has good bones, it has some lovely and quite unique features, and the bad points we’ve stumbled across since we moved in aren’t spectacularly unusual in a house of this age. But I still have moments where I find it hard to accept the house as … home. The horrible flat was ‘home’ much sooner, and I cannot put my finger on why.

Some of it is the decor, I think. We moved in, and left everything as it was. Hopefully we’ll at least paint the most horrible bits this summer, because if I have to spend another winter with the depressive dark blue walls in the lounge I will bite someone.

And some of it is the furniture. We still have all the kitset cheap stuff that I bought from the Warehouse. And it’s perfectly functional, and acceptable, and there is nothing WRONG with it, and thus we are using it. We’re gradually replacing and updating it, as finances allow, but that’s going to be an extremely long and painful process. We have had the most frustrating conversations when I drag him out shopping for things; with his inability to express what he’s looking for butting up against my BUT I NEED AN EXPLANATION WHY YOU DON’T LIKE THIS, DAMMIT*.

We are so lucky to be here, astonishingly so, and I don’t exactly want to be Little Miss Selfish Spoiled Whinypants Brat. The fact is that he and I still have very different opinions of the house. He’s still got 20-some years of “living in the UK” habits and opinions on homes, and, well, New Zealand homes are just DIFFERENT. He’s used to solid brick, central heating, multiple stories, semi-detached or terrace houses; the newest home he’s lived in was built in the late 1800′s. I’m used to wood, single levels, no central anything, and it being normal to have a lawn. The only house I’ve lived in was built in 1977. His parents are relatively wealthy, and had quite a big home in London; I grew up with a poor widow, and come from a house which could politely be described as “a box”. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s a very small house, with very old or very secondhand everything, which my mother keeps very neat and tidy, to the point of being stark in places.

It was the same with furniture. The UK is bigger, in population at least, and with their proximity to Europe there’s all sorts available. New Zealand just doesn’t HAVE a lot of what he’s used to, and what we do have is often in different styles**. It took a long time, and many frustratingly unproductive trips to various stores, for him to be able to verbalize the problem. And I probably still don’t really understand it. I’ve never left New Zealand, and don’t have a frame of reference for the lack of familiarity and frustration that being in another country at the opposite end of the planet must engender.

That’s where the argument in which I accused him of having no pride in the house came from. I was struggling to make a home, trying to work out how to make it feel like OURS; and I enjoy home-making. Putting art on the walls, making the room with the astonishingly terrible light blue and pastel purple paint over old wallpaper not look completely terrible. Setting up the kitchen to be organized and tidy, buying spiceracks and a new teapot. New sheets on the beds, duvet covers that look nice with the other furnishings, a tablecloth over the old table with a vase of (fake) flowers in the corner. I couldn’t understand why my efforts to make the house nicer, tidier, more organized, more OURS, were being butted up against a big wall of “blah”. Other than the cheap and secondhand furniture we bought in the flat, this has been the first time in my life I’ve had new things, it’s the first time in my life I’ve had nice new things***; and I couldn’t understand why he was at best indifferent. Not the normal blokey reaction of an eyeroll and a “yes, dear”, I wouldn’t have minded that. And I’d've understood it, anyway. It was depressing; I’d get excited in a housewifely sort of way about something I wanted us to do and run into a brick wall, and it was horrible.

We’ve talked it over, now, of course, which is why I am finally able to externalize the problems that have been raging in my head since last year. Since the stupid argument finally exploded into a conversation, we’ve bought new curtains in the lounge and bedroom, and a loungesuite, which I am ridiculously excited about because the last time anyone in my family bought one it was approximately 1976. Tobes still isn’t overfussed on it’s appearance, I’m not thrilled by the colour, but we both agree it’s comfortable, and at least I understand where he’s coming from now. I now realise his apparent indifference isn’t, I’m trying to be less pushy on the “but WHY?” front, and he realises why I was apparently being insistent on visiting every single furniture store in the city when he didn’t like any of it. The house is feeling more and more like home, and I’m starting to feel less guilty for what seemed like complaints about our good fortune.

It’s funny, really. I knew that we’d end up having culture shock somewhere along the lines, what with the well-travelled Brit moving in with the fairly sheltered Kiwi. I never expected it to be about furniture.

* This is possibly the trait which has caused the worst arguments we have had. I really, really do not like not knowing WHY things, and sometimes it’s none of my business…
** As a side note, I wish New Zealand had an IKEA.
*** some of them have even been expensive nice new things!