Lavender hidcote



Welcome to my blog. I came here to write about gardening but first I had to decide what to call myself. London has been swamped by torrential rain and so gardening was impossible anyway, apart from a brief evening excusion to pour salt on a few slugs.  During these wet and miserable evenings I noted that lots of gardeners already have catchy names for their blogs. My French husband suggest Belle du Jardin but that name had already gone. In any case, this conjours up images of Catherine Deneuve wistfully scenting a rose. I do have an Iceberg rose but life in my garden is a bit more gritty and real than that. No respect to Ms Deneuve but I am also quite a bit younger than her. Cats are up there with slugs as the enemy so I was thinking of catsinthegarden.blogspot.com. This might attract armies of cat lovers who would be inflamed my feline unfriendly slug pellets.  I would have  a cat fatwa on my hands. Cat lovers would break into my garden and plant signs saying 'cats, welcome to crap here' in my veg patch. Cats already feel welcome there anyway.  More on cats later.

I had a prima donna moment in one of our local garden centres the other day, so I really wanted to be Gardenista or a Gardenzilla. Alas, that both of those have already gone too to other pithier and faster off the mark garden writers.  Earlier this week I was browsing in the bijoux N1 garden centre.  They had some vintage crates on sale which I was planning to use as a stylish planter for my Cosmos seedlings but when I got to the counter they claimed they were no longer for sale.  I could have calmly stated my case and explained that as a loyal customer I would appreciate if they could reconsider.   I could then also review my stance on the clematis that I had just put back.  But no.  Instead I dropped the crate noisily and dramatically on their distressed wooden floor, turned on my Clark's heels and stormed out without saying a word.  This seemed like a good idea at the time but now I've realised that I can't show my face there for a few weeks.  Good luck to Gardenistas everywhere anyway.  I hope you get your own way.

So Licence to Kill Slugs it is and it's a pretty true reflection given this wet weather.  I'm out there every evening tracking them beneath my hostas.   Like the baddies in Bond films, they come up unexpectedly, eating things you would never expect and  intent on destroying everything in their path in the name of their own supremecy.  I'm sure gardeners everywhere don't need me to explain much more on why I hate them.