Blogging break from my London garden

Sorry if you were beginning to think I had vanished from the blogosphere with no goodbyes, I am still here - but struggling again with health issues. Thank you so much to all of you who have contacted me via email and Facebook to ask how I am, I so appreciate all the messages and I will try to reply to you all eventually. I also hope to catch up with blog comments from you on my previous posts and visit you all, but it will take some time to get there.

The last couple of months I have been struggling with my back again along with my very long list of other health problems and although I am trying my best to be very careful I have been feeling that I am heading for yet another slipped disc episode – very difficult so soon after the double slipped discs I had back in May this year. It is often just a minor thing that tips the scales when you go around with bulging discs in your back as I have now, it is painful like this - but much, much more painful to have an actual burst disc or two. I have been here many times before and recovered – and I have had 8 episodes of slipped discs before, between the age of 18 and May this year. I have no idea what the end will be this time, I am trying to sit as little as possible, computer work is limited to a minimum and needless to say, gardening has not been on the agenda for a long time.

But as if that wasn’t enough....The last time I posted was a whole month ago and I wrote about the cold I had, a nasty cold – I still have it! After the first 3 weeks of really bad coughing I managed to tear a chest muscle and had to go to A&E.....yeah, it sounds unbelievable, but it’s actually possible both to tear muscles and even crack ribs from persistent coughing, although it is very unusual apparently. Most abdominal strains or tears that do happen affect the muscle that runs down the middle of the abdomen, the one people often call the six-pack, but I have torn the external obliques muscles and it runs from the groin all the way up on the sides and is attached to the bottom 8 ribs.

If you put your left hand flat on the left side of your chest, between your armpit and your waist, as far back as you can put your arm while still holding – and then give yourself a long, deep cough....ouch! That’s where it hurts! And the other end of that muscle is buried under the pelvic bone on the side, almost in the groin - and hurts just as much. Everything I do involving that muscle hurts, and you’d get surprised how much it is in use in ordinary, everyday activity from getting up and down from the sofa, in and out of bed, going to the toilet, eating, drinking, just swallowing....even breathing. Oh, and did I mention coughing? And sneezing?? My goodness, I don’t have much control over when I need to cough, but I have absolutely NO control over sneezing. It’s like being stabbed with a knife with every sneeze and it takes a while to recover afterwards....

The A&E didn’t have much to offer besides a chest X-ray to exclude anything seriously wrong with my lungs, but I got the all clear and I just have a post-viral cough so that was good news at least. I was told that rest is the best remedy and avoid anything that hurts. Ha! Easier said than done. It’s gone 3 weeks now and I have been mostly in bed and on the sofa, with short, careful strolls in my garden a few times. I realise I am probably in for a long recovery, partly due to the nature of the injury, but also because of my underlying main condition (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) which makes recovery from any operation, injury or damage more difficult and prolonged compared to normal. So I am trying to take it easy and follow the advice I got from A&E and what I have read online. The pain should dictate the activity: ‘No sport or heavy lifting, no sweeping or digging.’ OK, that’s fine, I can live with that, although the sweeping part is going to be hard....it’s autumn! I should have very gentle activity that doesn’t hurt, although after 3 weeks it still hurts just lifting my arm up and down, never mind trying to move. So there you have it, pain both front and back but if I am not being careful I will cause this to last longer and become more severe than it is now. I already have gardening withdrawal symptoms so this is going to be challenging :-)

In the middle of me struggling with back pain and a torn chest muscle, the council finally started the adaptation work on my house that I have been waiting for since moving in here 18 months ago. It was agreed back in May, but it took till October before any of it started. When I am at home or in the garden I manage on one or two crutches with my disabilities, but I am not very good at walking more than a few steps here and a few steps there. I have therefore been mainly confined to my house and garden for many years except going to hospital and doctor appointments. In January I got a wheelchair to use outside and although I am not strong enough to wheel myself for longer stretches out and about, it gives me a new freedom when I am for example at my many hospital appointments – giving me for example the ability to get to the toilet on my own without needing help from anyone to get there. Yep, small things like that gives me great pleasure to manage on my own :-) My wheelchair is parked in my shed as bungalows for wheelchair users are like gold dust here in London, few and far between – I looked for 2 years for a bungalow when I moved from my previous house, just to get a house without stairs. If I was going to look for a wheelchair friendly bungalow I would probably still have been in my old house – looking!

So instead I have asked the council to make this bungalow as suitable as possible for me, and they have started with making a step-free path from the shed all the way out to the pavement so I can get out on my own, without any help. A small thing of independence maybe – but a huge thing to me. I don’t need a wheelchair indoors, or in the garden at the moment - I need it when out of the property and keeping it in the shed is therefore OK. However, the work making the path involved taking apart half of my lovely garden....so perhaps it is time to show you some photos? Hold on to your chair, you are in for a small shock I am afraid.

This was my garden in the middle of October....

.....and here 2 weeks later on the first day of work. Before this I had to dig up 26 plants already in the ground in this area - and I had good help of my 2 garden helpers doing this. We also had to move all the pots that were here and effectively clear away everything. The around 200 pots are stacked in between all the other pots around the garden.

The work lasted 4 days, with a small additional job on the 5th day. All the adaptations had been agreed with the council beforehand – a surveyor came to my garden and wrote down everything together with my occupational therapist, but as things often are – by the time the work started, the plan had changed, some of it considerably and the ‘same-level paved path from shed door to pavement’ I had been promised turned out to be rather different....for financial and practical reasons I was explained.

OK, so I am really grateful that the council is adapting the house for me so I can live an independent life here, but the disadvantage of having the council doing it for me rather than me hiring a builder company to do the work (and pay for it myself with money I don’t have) is that the council is the customer – not me. And one council office doesn’t know what the other is doing, there is no communication between departments and no one is inspecting the final work. That’s the council for you.

The noise and dust from the work was pretty bad at times.

My poor garden!

The concrete dust settled on everything and even a few days with rain hasn’t managed to rinse off everything. It’s good it is winter soon, many of these plants will shed their leaves and the rest will have to get a good scrub eventually.

And here is the garden the day they finished, this is 2 ½ weeks ago and just a few days after I had torn my chest muscle. The garden is ready for me to plant everything back again and carry all the pots back where they were....

All the paving is back in place and now straight with no dips or steps, and there are several concrete patches both here and in the front garden to make up for the difference in the height that was here previously. There is also a drain to take away rain water since everything now is concreted. Before, this part of the garden was just bedded in with sand like everything else, and drainage was not a problem – with concrete to make it as sturdy as possible the need for drainage turned up. Once you do one thing it often leads to another and another....

So am I happy with the work?

I am REALLY happy with the fact that the council has agreed to do the adaptations free of charge – the fact that it is free kind of comes with living in a council property, it isn’t my house, I am just renting it. If they deem the work necessary to me then they will also pay for having it done. You can’t just ask for whatever you want though, it is a long application process which involves assessments, lots of paperwork, phone calls, emails - and lots and lots of waiting. Patience is the most important quality to have if you ever need to get involved with your council’s adaptations office. But at the end you might be lucky to get a yes and get adaptations done free of charge to the property you are renting.

So what about the work? The fact that I am not the client/customer or the one paying the bills makes it more difficult. If I had been the client I would not been happy with some of the work. Look here for example, this is the step up to the Shade Garden. On the left side they have cut the edging so it fits snug to the paving slab, but on the right side there is a good inch gap. Why? And someone has had an ooops-moment on the edging stone to the left under the step and has started to cut it too low. Instead of cutting that bit off and using the rest somewhere else, they have just finished cutting it and used it regardless of the long, visible cut. I would not have done that if it was me doing the work, and a simple tape measure would have avoided that gap on the right side.

Some more clumsy work? Now, I am not a bricklayer, but I think I could have done this concreting better....I will never be able to cover this with soil as the soil level here is already too high and need to be levelled out before topped up with bark. And that edging is not exactly pretty either. I can cover things with plants, at least in the spring and summer, but seriously, why should I have to resort to that, why not do it properly and looking professionally instead, they were professional bricklayers....

I told both bricklayers how important my garden is to me and I asked them to make the edges towards the flowerbeds as neat as possible so I could plant all the way to the edge of the paving slabs – and they said that was no problem. This is what the beds look like now – all the beds they have worked around. There is an unbelievable amount of concrete dropped everywhere in the beds, just randomly it seems, and not connected to anything. It comes off with a trowel and a bit of digging so it has no bearing on the paving slabs, but sitting on my stool trying to scrape and lift this has proved impossible with my torn muscle and bulging disc in my back. I tried a little bit last week on one of the other beds and made the pain worse so that was me told....

So my garden is just fending for itself for now. It’s amazing how quickly the beds have filled up with dead leaves. We have finally had some rain so at least I don’t need to water anymore, I hope we will have a steady supply of rain from now on and the lower temperatures helps so even if it only rains once a week or so it should be enough. My garden helpers haven’t been back yet and it is a busy time for everyone now so I am not sure if I can hope for any more help until after Christmas.

Despite 3 weeks with neglect, many plants are still in flower. I have lots of cosmos left, a good round of dead-heading would have been ideal but is probably not going to happen. Both Lobelia cardinalis’ to the left are in flower too.

I took these photos a couple of days ago and the late afternoon sun in the front garden gives everything a golden hue.

Just don’t look too closely over the fence, where the leaves have started to come down. This is my path out with the wheelchair and there are tons more to come down from the trees before it’s all finished. Last year I filled 8 rubbish bags with leaves here in my front garden so I could safely walk out on my crutches, and when all the leaves had come down the council came and picked up the rest from the carpark and outside everyone else’s house. They only sweep once, after it’s all come down. That can take many weeks and is a bit of a long wait if you can’t come out with your wheelchair because the pavement is too slippery with wet leaves. No sweeping for me this year I think - sweeping was specifically mentioned several places I found information, as it is such a specific movement engaging specific muscles.

Let me show you some nice flowers instead, here is one you haven’t seen for many years, as mildew took it both last year and the year before – this year I was a bit more vigilant with spraying during the hot part of the summer and it has paid off. This is Aster 'Newstars Fantasy' and the poor thing is still in a pot, desperate for a place in the ground after at least 5 years in a pot. The colours are amazing and such a treat for November and December.

Here’s another one you have never seen before, and neither have I. It is Hibiscus grandiflorus 'Fireball' and I have been very close to throwing this plant in the compost bin several times. I can’t remember how many years I have had it, but perhaps 4 or 5, and when I bought it as a dormant little plant I thought in my naivety that it would flower that summer. How stupid of me. Anyway, the little plant grew, a bit every year and this year it grew to almost 2 ft tall, but still no sign of flowers. Not until late September – a bit late to turn up with a bud, ONE bud. I am not sure if this one is going to open but it has survived several nights with temperatures down to 4-5C and much colder than that is unlikely for the foreseeable future. The flowers are 20-25cm in diameter, absolutely huge, so it would have been nice if I could have seen just this one open. Since buying my plant I have read that Hibiscus grandiflorus are difficult to get to flower outside in UK. This one was sold as a garden plant and there was no mention that it needed to be grown in a greenhouse. I will give it another year and see what happens, I have had it for so many years now and it is still a happy plant - and one bud this year might mean more next year :-)

Do you remember the brugmansia I wrote about in October’s post? It is now safely stored for hibernation in my shed, it has been there for almost a month – and it is still flowering there in my shed. I have taken a couple of cuttings and brought inside as safety, if we get a very cold winter (like 2009/10), this plant might not survive and then at least I will have the cuttings.

This is Malva sylvestris 'Mystic Merlin', and my photo is not doing it a good favour as this amazing plant is 5 ft tall and covered in flowers, but by the time I got to this corner it was too dark to get the rest of the plant. I got this one as a tiny seedling in a plant swap and it is a keeper, at the moment it is in a pot, but this perennial will get a permanent space somewhere soon.

Time for some roses? Most of my roses are in flower but some of them suffer from blackspot and some need treatment for thrips. I know they will be fine eventually even if they get neglected for now, but it’s hard just watching my garden from the window and not get stuck in! This rose is 'Susan Williams-Ellis' – or ‘Messy Susan’ as she is known as in my garden. A lovely rose anyhow.

And this is 'Wildeve', I absolutely love the colour of this rose in the late autumn and winter – as with most roses the temperature has an effect on the colour and 'Wildeve' loses the strawberry pink colour it normally has and instead it gets this porcelain pink look. Exquisite.

Oh, but who is this?!

I have got a lodger - an uninvited lodger in my garden. I am not sure if it is a male or a female, but most likely it is a female, a vixen, looking for somewhere to nest and have cubs. She might already be pregnant, if so it’s rather early. Or she might just suss out the garden and area before she accepts one of the many male foxes roaming around here. She is often behind my shed in that blind space between the wall and the shed and I can hear her rummaging around back there when I am in the shed. I am not looking forward to this if she has chosen my garden to have her family as I have been through that twice before in my old house. It is a lot of mess for a whole year until they all disperse in the late autumn next year.

But at the moment it is just one fox, she is not particularly afraid of me and is OK with seeing me through the windows and doors without getting scared. If I open the door and come out, she will walk away – but walk, not run. And she will often stop and turn around and look at me as she walks away. Not in a ‘I am scared you might be following me’ – kind of way. No, it is more a kind of a sulky teenager ‘Arghhh....do I HAVE to move??!!’ kind of look. People who are not used to urban foxes ask if they are dangerous and the answer is no, they are pretty harmless although there are stories where foxes have walked inside houses and attacked small children and people sleeping. That’s very unusual though. I have also heard and seen filmed foxes waiting outside big supermarkets and following people home just to attack their shopping bags to get their groceries! Yes, it sounds like something from a horror story, but this is behaviour not unheard of.

Foxes would not get into a fight with a human, or try hunting them, and neither do they try to hunt grown up cats or dogs, but on rare occasions there have been reported that foxes have taken kittens and chickens from people’s gardens. Foxes are scavengers and live off rubbish that humans leave like meat, bones, bread and bird food. Half eaten McDonald meals and sandwiches are said to be top of the food list for foxes in London. Wild mammals, birds and invertebrates are also common food source.

And foxes are very curious and playful, the mess here on my garden table is largely down to the squirrels helping themselves to some of my newly planted spring bulbs (Arghhhh!!!) – but Ms Fox here is checking out if there’s anything left to either play with or eat – or both. A few weeks back she took one of my garden gloves and hid it somewhere after I forgot to put the gloves back in the shed. Just one glove – the other one was left on the table. I wonder what she has done with it. Is it behind the shed or has she dug a hole in the ground for it? Next year when I am planting the rest of the plants, perhaps my missing glove will turn up?!

Here are my tulips for next year, all planted up weeks ago, with a layer of chicken wire under the bark to stop the squirrels from digging. But it didn’t stop Ms Fox from digging here, spot the paper bag in container number 5.

She had left a half-eaten bacon and bread roll complete with ketchup, wrapped up in a Gregg’s paper bag. It was properly rolled up before she hid it under the bark, it wasn’t until I uncovered it and opened the paper bag I realised what was in my tulip container! Sorry, but it went in my bin, she will have to get her breakfast from somewhere else tomorrow!

Having a fox family in your garden can be a huge challenge, they don’t cover over when they have been to the toilet like cats do so there’s mess everywhere. The opportunity to take lots of cute photos are of course there when the cubs first emerge in late March or April, but they grow up very quickly and by the time you get to around September they are the same size as their parents. This fox has been here every day for the last 3-4 weeks so I am pretty sure it is here to stay for the winter and from past experience I would not be surprised if it turns out to be a pregnant vixen. She spends most of the time sleeping and it’s strange to see her lying there in the sunshine, on the exact same spot my cat used to lay – where the sunshine would warm up the wall of the shed and the paving.

Almost finished now, just got to show you that even though it might say 17th of November on the calendar, my garden is still in full swing and it is still producing strawberries! Next year I will have to design some sort of cages with netting for my two raised strawberry beds so the fruit doesn’t get stolen before it is ready to be eaten. I guess the squirrels will have to fight the birds and the pigeons for these – and the fox will happily eat these strawberries too – and so would I, but I would like them to be a bit red first so I am pretty sure they will end up in a different stomach than mine :-)

And all the hype about the super moon made me go out and take a photo on the kitchen steps. Not sure if the moon is any bigger than last time we had a super moon and that’s not so long ago – but I haven’t measured :-)

Final photo - from an autumnal looking front. This is what I see from my bedroom window, not a bad view to wake up to every morning :-) I must admit I see more of this view than most of my neighbours as I spend a lot of my time in bed so having a nice front garden and being able to see flowers from this side of the house too has always been a priority to me.

It has been a gentle autumn weather the last month with temperatures of 4-8 C at night (39-46 F) and 8-14 C (46-57 F) during the day, sometimes even higher. The next 2 weeks are set to be the same, with some showers here and there so no problems with the few frost-tender plants I have. I keep hearing threats about this winter being predicted to be the coldest in many years. That’s what they predicted last year too. And the year before. And neither was true, quite the opposite - so I have stopped listening. I’ll deal with frost if and when it turns up, until then both my garden and I appreciate a frost-free winter and hope for yet another one :-)

Next month I have been blogging for 6 years, can’t really believe it has been that long – I won’t stop, I really want to continue and I would truly like to keep in touch with everyone, but for now I just have to take a break. I will be back as soon as I can, and in any case I will be posting short updates on my Facebook Page so if you haven’t signed up yet perhaps it would be a good time to do so now? I will try to write a post for Christmas and see how things go in the new year. Hopefully I feel better by then.

Thank you again to everyone who has been in touch, I love to hear from you all and I so appreciate all your comments – they are little treasures of gold and I read every one of them, often more than once. See you all next time for a Christmas post.