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.

Ill in bed again - a very different EOMV post

I don’t normally write much about my many different conditions, illnesses and disabilities – I have from time to time written a bit, mainly to explain why I can’t work in my garden like other people do – or at the same pace as most people do. But I have deliberately kept my health problems away from my blog. You see, my gardening blog is my way of escaping my real life. Here no one knows me, no one sees me, no one sees my pain and I can pretend I am almost normal. I can be a completely different person than I actually am. I can be the person I would HAVE LIKED TO BE – if life had been different.

Naming my garden - GBBD April 2016

As a foreigner living in Britain, English is a language I am still learning – even after 17 years here in London. I still bump into words I have absolutely no idea what means and I love looking them up and see their meaning and history. Some words just jump up and down and do a little dance for me when I see them, some words are just hilarious whilst others give me a lump in my throat. Have you heard the word ‘Discombobulate’ before? What a lovely word! And what about haberdashery?? I absolutely love that word too. OK, so the title of this post is naming my garden. I have thought about doing that for a while. Well, to be honest, I have thought about it for many years, but I never really found a good name. I know it is quite common here in Britain to name your house, at least if you live in a countryside cottage or in a somewhat grand house. Naming your house in a council terraced 2-up-2-down in East London would probably have raised some eyebrows, so that was never on my agenda. But my garden? The most important room in my house? Sure! ....But what?

Happy Birthday Cat

November is the month my cat has birthday, I am not exactly sure what date, but it is probably in the second half so I thought I would mark it here with another post about him – and some photos. Today’s post is part following up on repeat posts from 2011 and part new, as some of the info here had to be updated.

Half full or half empty – repeat

It’s late November and even though I am outside in my garden every day and I still have lots of plants in flower, it is definitely a quiet time of the year in terms of gardening. I have been blogging for almost 3 years and in my first year of blogging I didn’t have that many visitors. I have therefore decided to recycle a few of my posts from the first year and hope you enjoy them again even if you might have read them before. Here is the first repeat post.

Gardening when having difficulties

I thought long and hard about a title for today’s post. I thought about calling it ‘Gardening when getting older', or ‘Gardening with disabilities’, but I wanted to make sure I reached all of you and that I didn’t make a niche post for just a few. You see, I think most people can draw some nuggets from this post, regardless of your physical abilities, and even if you feel you have no issues when gardening, perhaps you know someone who has, who could need some tips.

A bird obsession looming?

Over the years I have seen so many impressive photos of birds on people’s gardening blogs, and I would really like to take some myself - would make a nice change from all the flower photos I usually take in my garden. I have realised that in order to take successful bird photos you also need to feed them, as by feeding the birds you have a way of getting the birds come to you.

The Norwegian Christmas tree

Living in London, UK, I often hear at this time of year about the famous Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, often referred to as “the tree given by the people in Norway to the people in London”. As a Norwegian, knowing the story behind the Christmas tree, I thought I would use the opportunity to tell who the gift is from, and why, since I don’t think that’s something widely known here in the UK, and certainly not around the rest of the world.

Merry Christmas!

Are you celebrating Christmas Tuesday? Or are you celebrating tomorrow? Around the world, Christmas is celebrated in many different ways and at different times. I live in London, UK, and here, Christmas celebration takes place at 25th December, Christmas Day. I guess we all know the story why we have celebrated Christmas the last 1700 years or so, in one form or another, but it takes place in very different forms on different dates around the world. And in fact, Christmas as we know it is an amalgamation of many different celebrations which people in Europe have celebrated for thousands of years, long before the Bible was written.

Be careful what you wish for....

Here in London we have had the driest two winters on record, and after the snow we had in the first week of February it hardly rained a drop. Finally the government decided that we were to have water restrictions and a hosepipe ban introduced on the 5th April as our water storages are at the lowest on record. I am on a water meter and pay per litre for water I use, so I really hoped we would get some rain soon for my parched garden as the free stuff from above doesn’t come at any cost or any work at all.

The troublesome corner

“Once upon a time there was a lady who had a small garden in London whom she was very fond of.” Ehhm…..Let me just interrupt for a moment here and say that these stories usually claim to have a ‘tiny, little old lady’ or a ‘grey-haired old lady’ or something similar, but this story is different, this story is about a not so very old, 47 year of age lady, who is not tiny, not even short…in fact, she is 5’9”, but the last bit is perhaps not that relevant, so let me get back to the story!

The squirrel is back!

I sat here today having my late afternoon lunch and suddenly a squirrel jumped up in the window box right in front of me! I am not exactly unfamiliar with squirrels in my window boxes, but I haven’t seen any squirrels for months, and the squirrel that was here today actually looked exactly like the one that was here most days last year!

It’s 2012!

Yes, it’s finally here, a brand new year, twelve new months we all can fill with whatever we feel like, a new book with blank pages. Have you got any big plans for this year? Any major things happening in your life? I got a few things planned, nothing major I suppose, but I always got new projects for my garden and I plan to publish my fifth book sometime this spring, and possibly a sixth one too, if I can manage to find the time. I wish I could find out where to apply for an increase of the day – 30-32 hours day would suit me much better than just 24 hours :-)

24.12. Merry Christmas!

Are you celebrating Christmas tomorrow? Or are you celebrating tonight? Around the world, Christmas is celebrated in many different ways and at different times. I live in London, UK, and here, Christmas celebration takes place at 25^th December, Christmas Day. I guess we all know the story why we have celebrated Christmas the last 1700 years or so, in one form or another, but it takes place in very different forms on different dates around the world. And in fact, Christmas as we know it is an amalgamation of many different celebrations which people in Europe have celebrated for thousands of years, long before the Bible was written.

22.12. Letter to British Gas

Hi everybody, I received a letter from the Managing Director of British Gas Tuesday this week, not a personal letter exactly, it was more like a general information letter that British Gas regularly sends out, but this one had a somewhat different tone than usual. In the letter British Gas commits to have an ‘Honest Conversation’ with their customers and they also encourage their customers to email them feedback to their new approach – their honest conversation! I must admit I have been thinking about writing to British Gas for a long time, and this feels like a good opportunity, but the things I am experiencing I am sure I am not alone with, so I thought I should make my feedback an open letter to British Gas, here on my blog, with a copy via email to them. My apologies to all my overseas readers who might feel that this particular topic doesn’t apply to them, please read on for a while; this isn’t as much about British Gas in particular as it is about financial hardship and what gas and electricity companies can do to ease the burden on their customers in times like these. Maybe this applies to where you live too?

14.12. The Norwegian spruce

Living in London, UK, I often hear at this time of year about the famous Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, often referred to as “the tree given by the people in Norway to the people in London”. As a Norwegian, knowing the story behind the Christmas tree, I thought I would use the opportunity to tell who the gift is from, and why, since I don’t think that’s something widely known here in the UK, and certainly not around the rest of the world.

The Christmas tree is a gift from the citizens of Oslo to the citizens of London, not from the whole of Norway, and that’s actually a bit of a difference – Oslo is the capital of Norway and has a population of just over 600.000 people, Norway in total has almost 5 mill people. But it is the story behind the Christmas tree that makes this an interesting piece of history.

10.12. New neighbours again

I am getting new neighbours again, I have just been told that the family next door is moving out next week. I have a somewhat special relationship with their garden, so it is with a mix of anticipation and trepidation I now wait for them to move out and someone else to move in. Let me explain…

I live in a typical terraced London street, with tiny houses with tiny rooms and tiny back gardens, and where privacy is something you can only dream of, inside and outside. For many years the next door neighbour to my right was a single man a couple of years older than me. He was not well, and the last few years he didn’t cope very well on his own and lived mostly at his mother’s house. I don’t think he was very much into gardening before he became ill, and it was surely not a priority to him the last 5-6 years. The result was that his garden became very overgrown and looked terrible. Having just a low fence between us meant that whenever I was in my garden, I could also see his garden and the state of it. And my neighbour to the left has been even worse, using their garden as a rubbish tip and letting all sorts of weeds grow head high.

10.11. Almost Christmas??

The amazing autumn weather is continuing here in London; I was at my local hospital yesterday to take a blood test and some people were walking around in shorts and T-shirts! Now that would have been taking it a bit far as for myself concerned, but I am still wearing the same jacket I have been wearing all summer when going out and my winter coat hasn’t been out of my wardrobe since late February….and it’s only just over 6 weeks till Christmas!

08.10 Silly job titles, UK

I haven’t gone off on a rant lately but tonight I am feeling the need :-) I have been thinking about writing a post about silly job titles in the UK for a while, as this is one of my pet hate and I as a foreigner have been watching this growing trend here in the UK with a mix of amusement and horror. When I moved to London 12 years ago, I got a bit bewildered by all the fancy job titles people seemed to have here. Just about anyone I got in touch with in the beginning was called officer this and officer that. Now, I am not unfamiliar with the term officer; my father was an officer in the army, and I spent my childhood and part of my teens in various garrisons together with my siblings and my parents. We moved often, as army people do, and we used to live in the officer’s accommodation together with the other officer families. So I knew very well what an officer was when I left Norway and moved to the UK – I thought.

04.08. The Prophet's Mosque

I have just seen an interesting series of programs from BBC2 which I recorded over the last few weeks, but only watched the last few days. The title of the series was ‘The Life of Muhammad’ and the three-part series, presented by Rageh Omaar, charted the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Apart from being very interesting history and important background facts, the programs were also beautifully filmed in a part of the world where I have never been and where I will never be able to visit.