A Blogger’s View

Tags

Bill Bryson, Cornwall, David Day, Good Gardens Guide, NASA, Norfolk, Troublesome Words, WiFi

I seem to be spending more and more of my time in front of my computer these days. Increasingly for work but also, of course, for blogging. Catching up on other blogs yesterday evening, I was struck by the thought of the people I have got to know ever so slightly via their blogs over the last year, and I wondered what they were looking at whilst they were composing their posts.

David Day painting – the view from my computer

I don’t actually have a view from my desk, it’s positioned in such a way that I’m staring into a corner. It does little to inspire but I suppose the upside is I don’t get distracted. Last year we finally got round to buying a painting to go above the desk. A painting of a local scene in really muted colours which captures the dark brooding hills and farmland around my village in Wales. The artist, David Day, used to be an architect and I love the buildings and the way he has drawn them with a flattened perspective. This style is more prominent in some of his other works. I just fell in love with this painting though. The sheep, the farmer, the white farm buildings and the looming form of the Skirrid, the hill in the background will always make me think of this part of the country, no matter where we live.

I often find myself drifting off and staring at it. In a very small way it connects me to the outside whilst I’m in front of the computer. We’ve had the painting nearly a year now and even though I see it pretty much every day I haven’t got sick of it.

Joining the computer on my desk is a peace lily. With yellowing leaves and crusty leaf tips it has that slightly unloved look most house plants seem to have, certainly in my house anyway. I haven’t managed to actually get this plant to flower since I bought it which is disappointing but not unusual apparently. So often the conditions in our homes aren’t suitable for the plants we grow indoors. Still I don’t mind too much, it adds a splash of greenery and it was voted by NASA as one of the best plants to grow to clean the air. A plant particularly useful for sticking next to electrical equipment as it can absorb the small levels of radiation given off by computers and also chemicals such as formaldehyde, given off by paint and soft furnishings.

There’s a selection of books including a bashed and battered dictionary that has seen me through A’ Levels and university, this has sat on many a desk and bookcase over the years. It isn’t the most comprehensive of word collections but suffices; I probably use the thesaurus more. An out of date Good Gardens Guide that my dad gave me, which is a useful reference guide and Bill Bryson’s Troublesome Words sit on the desk too. I first read the latter a few years ago and loved it. I’ve always been a huge fan of Bryson, an American writer, who has become an honorary Brit. Known mostly for his travel writing, Troublesome Words is one of his very early books written when he was working as a sub-editor for The Times newspaper. Inspired by having to use the English language and its glorious disorderliness every day he wrote this book to answer some of those questions that even the most educated get wrong. Peppered with some quite cringing examples of grammar and spelling misdemeanours by journalists, his book highlights the problems most of us encounter with our own language. Whether to use flaunt or flout, is there anything wrong with splitting an infinitive and whether you can start a sentence with ‘and’? After taking it out from the library again this year I decided I would buy myself a copy. I knew of a little second-hand bookshop in a town we were visiting whilst on holiday and thought I’d pop in. I couldn’t quite believe it when I saw it sitting on a shelf in the shop and for the bargain price of £3. For anyone who likes writing and language I can highly recommend it.

And finally, sat on the far corner of the desk is a collection of natural stuff, shells, pine cones and pretty stones picked up on walks. They remind me of particular places, my favourite beach in Cornwall, a woodland walk in Norfolk. Again these connect me to the outdoors even though I’m writing away on my keyboard. At the moment they have been arranged by Wellyman to sit on top of the router. He is trying to achieve the optimum range for the WiFi and has moved it about in an attempt to discover where this is. At the moment it seems it’s at the end of the desk with shells perched on top. I don’t think these are adding anything to the signal though.

I dream one day of having a view from my desk, maybe of my garden or of the sea. I’m sure I get more work done without one though. I’d love to know a little bit about what you see whilst you’re writing your blog.

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The Houseplant Conundrum

Tags

Eden Project, feng shui, House plants, NASA, plants to purify the environment

How do you feel about houseplants? Do you love having pots of verdant plants dotted around your home or do you think the best place for plants is the garden? Do they thrive under your care or do they struggle to survive your regime of drought followed by drowning? As a plant lover I’m ashamed to admit that houseplants are my achilles heel.

I have always had a plant or two since I left home. Plants at university never really survived my student lifestyle. In contrast, my good friend doted on her plants, all of which had names and thrived. During the summer breaks I would be treated to updates on their progress in her letters to me.

In our first home together we bought a couple of plants from that large Swedish furniture shop. Along with the flat pack furniture with the strange names it seemed obligatory to buy a couple of plants. The one that I remember, possibly because it survived our attentions or lack of them, was a rubber plant or Ficus elastica. He even made the move back from Germany stuffed in the back of our car with the rest of our possessions deemed essential for living for several months whilst the rest was moved into storage. In our new flat he, his name is lost from my memory, was joined by a weeping fig which within days of purchase completely shed it’s leaves leaving a pathetic looking couple of bare stems in the pot. Eventually, the rubber plant got too big and was given to someone with more space.

Streptocarpus Seren (image from dibleys.com gold medal winning streptocarpus growers)

There have been other plants; a kalanchoe whose leaves were eaten by some undiscovered creature, an areca palm that developed blotchy leaves, orchids that never flower again and a streptocarpus that I overwatered amongst others.

My peace lily

My current houseplant roll call consists of 2 peace lilies, 3 money plants and 1 streptocarpus. The peace lilies were flowering when I bought them four years ago but haven’t flowered since but they do make attractive foliage plants and obligingly droop when they require a drink, so there is little danger of overwatering. They are also, according to NASA,  one of the best plants to have in the house to absorb the chemicals that are given off by modern furnishings and electrical appliances. I read somewhere that peace lilies are particularly sensitive to chlorine in tap water. It causes the tips to brown and die. So now I leave a glass of water standing overnight before using it to water them.

The streptocarpus is fussier and has proved more of a challenge to keep alive. It doesn’t like full sun so is only really happy on one particular window sill. It has slightly hairy leaves and doesn’t seem to like water splashing it’s leaves, otherwise it develops brown, dry patches. I have managed to get this one to flower though, which is something and once it starts flowering it goes on and on. I did forget to water it for a while though, partly because I killed the last streptocarpus by drowning the poor thing, so now the compost in the pot has formed a solid mass and shrunk away from the sides. Fortunately, March is the best time to pot on houseplants and give them some TLC so it won’t be long now before I can give this plant a new home.

My money plants

The money plants were grown from cuttings from my mum-in-law’s plant and have been very successful, they can get quite big and I don’t have the space, so I have to take cuttings every couple of years and start the plants off again. Money plants, however are really undemanding and there would be something wrong if they couldn’t survive my attention. They sit on my study window sill facing south east which is apparently where they should be according to feng shui. I have to say this has less to do with any adherence to this eastern philosophy than it is the only window sill available but still when I win the lottery I can say it was because of the placement of my money plants.

I know I’m not alone when it comes to struggling to keep houseplants alive. So why do they give us gardeners so many problems? Well as most gardeners know you should work with the conditions you have rather than trying to get plants to adapt and to some extent this is the problem with houseplants. Our homes really don’t provide most plants that are sold to us for the house with the conditions they require. Most houseplants are tender plants from the tropics. They generally like humidity and constant temperatures, the 2 things homes can’t really provide. If they did it wouldn’t be very pleasant for us to live in them, think Eden project in your lounge. Despite this I do still like having a few plants indoors and I’m sure they do make the environment in my home healthier, I just need to try a little harder to nurture these plants that I so often neglect.

Please feel free to share any houseplant horror stories, it’s a cathartic process.