Corpsey

bandz ahoy
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I take this as a sign that I am entering my twilight years

Last week I was on a massive comedown from glastonbury and I soothed myself by watching an old series on iPlayer about a horticulturalist from lancashire living in Essex and tending to her garden (assisted by her doddery deaf old neighbour Reg)

Do you find, as fellow middle aged has-beens, that you're becoming more attendant to flowers and plants and shit?
 

hmg

Victory lap
Friday nights are all about Gardener's World on bbc2 now. Monty Don is the green fingered Don gorgon. If you don't grow, get to grow, etc.
 

Murphy

cat malogen
Plants - get into it, what use are decorative pots of fuck all ie has-been pots? Find the space to convert to plants, then work out what might be an appropriate match (light, space, etc)

@HMGovt’s Glorious Return! is correct in that, once you get past Monty Don’s very English sense of wavering depression, he’s a fountainhead of plant wisdom without turning the discussion onto home ownership and/or garden access fascism. If I’m on nights, a genius way to wind down but have to skip guff with gilets and terribly attired co-hosts, discussion with no discernible pers interest/relevance, yet the show is superb on seasonality taskscapes. See also @craner pruning roses ..

House, flat, room, whatever, I grew specific “sea-of-green” plants on a converted bus in my 20’s. Cheaper overall than a dog, less responsibility than a cat (fuck cats, seriously). If you’re restricted to indoors or cost-prohibited , even better to some extent. Orchids have a fussy reputation but nearly all our window sills are lined with varietals and their blooms are genuinely eye-catching all year round (south-facing). All you need are wee y-framed supports and fortnightly watering

The kids are into cacti and insect homes after a school lesson on precarious life forms, so now the upper floors and attic are increasingly beholden to their spikey domains. Avoid pre-prepared pots of herbs from supermarkets - nightmare to trim effectively without compounding frequency of inedible stalks

Try an allotment out - @sufi knows the craic - or explore Crime Pays but Botany Doesn’t for a worldwide focus on plants you may never have heard of. Soak up the knowledge, if you can quote literature you can keep healthy plants



 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Gardening is a scam. Just leave it alone and it will get jam-packed with more than you could ever imagine. Slugs won't be a problem because there's just too much to eat.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Gardeners are the same type of people as those who insist on seating everybody next to someone with whom they will really get on at social events instead of letting us all mill around and work it out for ourselves.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I know this is probably outrageously off the mark but is gardening quite an English obsession?

It seems to jive with a certain sort of English mentality.

Whereas Americans I assume fill their gardens with guns, megachurches and shopping malls

Biscuits meanwhile, who is from Scandinavia or something, lives in a huge metropolitan flat and has never seen a garden except on holiday to Surrey

I assume?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Gardeners are the same type of people as those who insist on seating everybody next to someone with whom they will really get on at social events instead of letting us all mill around and work it out for ourselves.
I read a piece by John Carey about vegetable gardening earlier that really backs this "gardener as petit fascist" argument up
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
He writes with relish of murdering slugs so they don't eat his pumpkins

He wishes he could murder cats that leap the fence and befoul the soil between his parsnips

Etc

Taming the elements
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
As luka will point out, nobody in London has a garden unless they're a millionaire

Although I did have one at a previous address where the rent was dirt cheap

Didn't take advantage of it ofc
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I know this is probably outrageously off the mark but is gardening quite an English obsession?

It seems to jive with a certain sort of English mentality.

Whereas Americans I assume fill their gardens with guns, megachurches and shopping malls

Biscuits meanwhile, who is from Scandinavia or something, lives in a huge metropolitan flat and has never seen a garden except on holiday to Surrey

I assume?
Our garden is our wilderness. It has reached the stage where it resembles a very small tract of woodland with undergrowth so thick that we sometimes hear unidentifiable growling noises from within it. It's not optimised for edible produce but there is an apple tree and I chucked a number of cherry stones in too when I found out the trees get obnoxiously large.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Oh I'm already getting into houseplants

I've had them for a long time but they were always furniture for me

Then my dad sent me a monstera plant as a present and I've become obsessed with growing it as big as possible
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
has anyone been to open gardens? i went to a couple this year. not exactly by choice. the one in my village was the biggest event i've seen there for years. i had the feeling that these are growing. they are obviously an activity for the quite elderly. there's an appetite for something that replaces the may days and village football matches that were there in the 90s but have since been wiped out. where i'm from at least. flowers and gardens are a bit like music in some ways. can easily filter into the background. but they reward attention. there's a lot to get into. the open gardens were the first time i've noticed trans people in the countryside. or men wearing women's clothes (i don't know what the correct terminology is. maybe that's covered under trans). unrelatedly, the gentrification of villages isn't something i've seen anyone write about. but in my one it's definitely happening. or actually has already happened. hard to split out how much of it is that the kind of people there have changed, and how much of it is just that people in general have changed. but for sure something new is emerging in the village, a new formation of life
 
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