I haven't been a very good blogger, have I? 6 months or so since my last post. But what a hectic 6 months they've been! NEed I really tell anyone that? The world is rather a different place now than what it was 6 months ago. It's disorientating to remember this time last year and how everything was then compare it to now. I am lucky that I still have a job, though with salary cuts and tax increases I'm significantly less well off. Things are tight right now. I have to budget everything - clothes, food, bills, savings and, of course, socialising. I like the way it's now okay, almost chic, to be a skinflint! If you do it in a chic way, of course! If it involves growing your own food and doing more slimming and health-giving walking and cycling and less take-ways then it's healthier to be poorer. Enjoying all the free things in life as hobbies such as a hiking up a mountain with friends, picnicing on the beach after a trip to the supermarket, cycling to new places and discovering unknown swathes of the local country-side/city/town area all immense fun and largely forgotten pleasures. Scribbling in a sketchbook, scrap-booking - cheap fun is endless. And it makes you more creative, right? Doing one or all of the above gives a sense of accomplishment and pleasure that a week in a 4 star hotel or eating in an expensive restaurant followed by an expensive night's drinks and clubs cannot. Your figure and your liver will also thank you. Personally, I have never stopped enjoying these things, but I feel a tide-shift in that now I'm not the only one enjoying these things. Not that I ever was, of course, but I now hear increasing numbers of people recounting similar tales.
Having said all the above, the weekends are so short, that it is simply not possible to do all that all the time. Especially not when you have a large garden as we do full of grass that grows so fast you can sit and watch it, weeds that grow exponentially faster, slugs that never sleep and lurking caterpillar and other hungry beasties. Our great nemesis could be described as our pet cat Rua. No pot big or small full of (litter-like) compost is safe from an exploratory dig with the paw or even a full cat body crouching into it, possibly peeing. Likewise lovingly-dug, tender seedbeds. Whole crops have been ruined. I cannot grow Nepeta cataria or any related variety, much as I love them and often as I've tried. This year might be successful as one is cunningly hidden in the midst of a large bed of Calendula officinalis and Hypericum perforatum. Or perhaps I have now spoken too soon. One stalk does not make a patch, so we'll see if it gets beyond one stalk.
