18 June 2006
Note to self: People are bored by the places you used to live. How about. . . . roses?
Here's a recipe for a nice weekend: Take one day's worth of work that needs to get done (so you can frolic with your friends on Tuesday); do half of the hours on Saturday morning, shower and get dressed, go to Piccadilly and watch jets fly in formation overhead (airshow nearby?) and shop at Uniqlo, which you've only just discovered but are now totally a fan of. Finish the remaining work hours on Sunday morning before heading off to the seaside with your beau (and packed lunches). Find a nice rose garden:
This is in Chalkwell Park, which I don't think I've ever walked around before. I'm so glad we found it when we did -- it was beyond 'in bloom', and the scent was amazing (less amazing if you had allergies). Finally, a reason to have lugged my camera around with me!
I'd really like to have a garden. Somebody (I can't remember who -- was it you?) was writing the other day about their urban vegetable patch, and it's really stuck in my head. Terraced houses here often have a miniature front garden wedged between the pavement and the house front, and many of them seem to be planted with weeds and wheelie bins. I walk by several such gardens on my way to the train in the morning, and I like to think what I'd do with them.
There's a house next to our building that looks just this side of condemned: the plaster on the side is cracked and falling off, there are broken windows, and you can often hear a phone off the hook as you walk by. The residents do, however, have a very polite and tidy grey cat which blinks at me when I walk by (she's usually perched on the outside window sill, waiting to be let in), so they must simply have confusing priorities (cat brushed and collared, check; house structurally sound, erm. . . ).
Anyway, now that summer's here (nearly), their little front garden has been in bloom, mainly with roses and bleeding hearts. I can't quite imagine the owners have planted these bushes, but at least they haven't been actively demolishing them.
(That's still from the Chalkwell rose garden, not next door.) If I lived in that house, after I'd installed a mechanism to keep the roof from falling down on me, I'd rip out half the garden and plant it with edible things -- beans and peas and some nice herbs. I'd leave the other half as it is, aside from some heavy weeding, because the fat roses and tiny bleeding hearts are the cheeriest thing about that place.
Also, I'd let the little grey cat inside and give it a pat.
Delurking. I didn't comment but I wasn't bored. I like peeking into those rooms, just like I enjoyed looking at your new craft room. Things just seem quieter in general in blogland.
posted by *karen at June 18, 2006 09:28 PM
Beautiful! Rose gardens are the best. So many different varieties. Even on the same bush the roses are so individually unique. They really are quite a royal flower aren't they?
posted by momma at June 18, 2006 10:41 PM
I can almost smell the roses off the screen :)
Jets - Queen's birthday? On;y because I saw them on the news!
posted by Alison at June 18, 2006 10:55 PM
Gorgeous roses! They look like the older variety that actually smell too. Urban vegetable patch, now that sounds interesting. As were your "rooms I have lived in". I have great memories of the shoeboxes I lived in at Uni, nice to see it wasn't just me.
posted by Gemma at June 19, 2006 09:24 AM
Is it wrong of me to find that really funny? Maybe if you put some roses in the rooms??
posted by Megan at June 19, 2006 11:46 PM
Was it my garden? How exciting if it was!
Oh, and I was quite interested in your previous rooms - just to lazy to comment *blush*!
posted by Leisl at June 20, 2006 10:23 AM
Cripes! Also too lazy, it would appear, to check my spelling before I post. Too, too, too.
posted by Leisl at June 20, 2006 10:25 AM
You know that blinking cats are actually saying "I love you," right? At least according to the author of The New Natural Cat, our kitty bible, when we had time to actually read about our cats instead of just try to remember where they are, and hope they're still around somewhere. . . .
posted by Alicia P. at June 20, 2006 09:55 PM