by Tracey Thorn

September/October.

Oh, but I am a fair weather gardener. I hang my head in shame as I tell you this, and I accept without complaint the accusation that it relegates me to the category of Not Really A Proper Gardener At All. But what can I say, it’s the truth, and I have to own to up to it in this column, if nowhere else.

At this time of year I embark on a grand and thoroughly self-defeating project of Putting Everything Off. The autumn clear-up needs to be started, I know it does, and I know everything will look better once I get on with it, but still … I fanny around making another cup of tea, I leaf through the paper, I go and make a stupid joke on Twitter … ANYTHING rather than dig up the mouldy courgette plants, haul the old Grobags out of the greenhouse, and generally start putting everything to bed for the winter.

This year my laziness is compounded by another fact, which is that of probable and imminent house-moving. There is every chance that by next spring we will be living in a different house, where I will have a much smaller garden, and no greenhouse at all. You might think this is a nightmare haunting my every waking moment, but in fact I’m very excited about the move. I’m looking forward to the general down-sizing it represents, and I love the house we’re moving to, but it does mean I’m having to think about saying goodbye to this particular garden. My heart is NEVER in the job of tidying up at the end of summer, because I am basically a) lazy and b) untidy, but this year I will be tidying up in order for someone else to start reaping the benefits next spring. And that someone might not even be much of a gardener. Might not want to grow vegetables. Might not even want my greenhouse.

Again, I stress that this really is not making me enormously sad. Despite a career of writing songs which suggest otherwise, I’m not a great dweller in the past, and once I’ve moved from anywhere I very easily leave it behind. But the mental energy that I would normally be putting into planning next year’s seed-sowing and vegetable rotating, I am now putting into the entirely different project of working how how I am going to garden a much smaller space. I’ll have to return to doing a lot more container gardening, which I love for its manageability, and without a greenhouse I’ll be making use of indoor windowsills, and sheltered sunny corners, and possibly a cold-frame or two. I’ve started searching out the on-line blogs of those who manage to grow vegetables on the balconies of high-rise flats, and the economies of scale involved in this kind of project are just what appeal to my instinctive minimalism. I love the thought of having to make every square inch productive in some way, and am already envisaging beds which will have lettuces interspersed with flowering plants, and pots of herbs and tomatoes which will look as ornamental as the geraniums and hostas they will sit beside.

More than anything, what excites me is the prospect of change. In truth, gardening can become repetitive, the same jobs need doing at the same time of year, every year, and whilst that is one of its comforts and pleasures, it can occasionally lead to a loss of inspiration. A new space, even a smaller one which will inevitably place restrictions on what I can do, contains new possibilities, and new problems which have to be solved. Planning is required. Much consulting of books for ideas. The studying of other people’s gardening blogs … it’s all VERY VERY IMPORTANT AND TIME-CONSUMING and means I can’t go outside and clear up those dahlias just now. Sorry.

Read Tracey’s previous columns here

‘Love And Its Opposite’ album and the ‘Opposites’ EP are out now on Strange Feeling Records

www.traceythorn.com

by Tracey Thorn.

August (and July).

Missed last month’s column, I’m afraid. As many of you probably already know, my Mum sadly died at the end of July, and in the weeks running up, and the weeks following, I wasn’t really up to doing anything much, let alone writing a semi-humorous article about my vegetables.

The column I missed out on writing was the one where I was going to describe the school summer fete. For the last three years I’ve done the plant stall. It started as a casual suggestion in the playground, and then snowballed into a labour of gardening love which now dominates the spring and early summer for me. Basically, whenever I’m sowing seeds, I sow some extra, and pot those things on to sell them at the fete. Tumbling Tom tomato plants, courgettes, aubergines, sweet peppers, basil, window-boxes of salad leaves, cuttings form my scented geraniums – I end up with about four car-loads of stuff to transport round to the school. But this year might be my last for a while, as the thanklessness of the task has begun to defeat me.

Like a dog-breeder reluctantly handing over puppies to a neglectful-looking owner, I hate selling my plants to people who so clearly are going to kill them.

“This courgette plant”, said one parent to me brightly, pointing at the lovely flower-tipped fruit balancing on the edge of the pot, “will it have any MORE courgettes after this one?” Probably not, in your hands, I stopped myself replying.

A teacher toyed with one of the tomato plants. “So, at the end of the summer, do I just cut it down to the ground, and it will come up again next year?”

My favourite this year was from the archetypal hard-to-please north London mother. I’d never seen her before, but she came and stood in front of the plants, fingering them all disdainfully. Finally she deigned to speak to me. “Tell me,” she said suspiciously, “where do all the plants COME from?” clearly suspecting that some kind of non-organic scandal was being perpetuated here in the name of gardening for charity.

I think next year I will take a break, and just run the tombola.

Anyway, that was back in June, and from July onwards, as my Mum fell ill, the garden inevitably got neglected. The dwarf French beans became infested with blackfly, beyond the point of being controllable, so I left them to it, managing to pick only one colander-full of beans. They were beautiful once I’d rinsed and scraped off every single sticky black bug, but the sink afterwards looked disgusting, the site of a blackfly massacre. Some of the lettuces were left to bolt, and the tomatoes were underfed, so the leaves now have a yellowy drained appearance, and look about as appealing as a pair of stone-washed jeans.

But yes, there have been moments when the pottering round the garden, doing little jobs here and there, and watching things carrying on with their cycle of growing and producing, has been as consoling as you’d expect. We’ve eaten lots of lovely things made from varying combinations of courgettes, aubergines, tomatoes and basil, to the point where possibly we don’t actually WANT to eat anything else made of those things for quite some time.

And now the late summer decline has begun, and the inevitable downward curve towards winter seems right and proper this year, when my mind, of course, is occupied with thoughts of endings.

Read Tracey’s previous columns here

www.traceythorn.com

by Tracey Thorn.

June

This year, for the first time ever, I visited Chelsea Flower Show. An evening event, to which I was invited by a friend who works in PR, meant that I was able to avoid the thronging daytime crowds, and scoot round the whole extravaganza in about an hour. A few random celebrities were dotted here and there, in amongst the imported olive trees, and the artfully arranged garden bric-a-brac. Rory Bremner over there, Britt Ekland over here, and up there, Nicky Haslam, picking his way along a note-perfect reconstruction of a Provencal gravel path towards a lady in full evening dress, playing the harp. It was, to say the least, incongruous, and whilst I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening, glass of champagne in hand, the impression I took away with me was that the Chelsea Flower Show has really sod-all to do with gardening as I know and love it.

A couple of weeks later, I noticed in Time Out that it was the Open Garden Squares Weekend in London. Various green spaces – some well-known, some small and insignificant – were open to the public, and spotting one very nearby, I announced on Sunday afternoon that we were going to visit the Branch Hill allotments in Hampstead.

In many ways it was a classic family outing – the weather turned too hot as we traipsed up the hill, it was a little further than we thought, the oldest kids moaned about the distance, and the youngest, wearing new Crocs for the first time, got blisters and had to be revived with a bottle of Oasis and a pack of plasters. But when finally we got there, it restored my faith in the wonder and beauty of gardening, and made me feel again that it was something anyone could do, and could then share with anyone else who did it. There was that combination of the ramshackle and the orderly common to all allotments, and which I love more than any sweeping lawn or herbaceous border. Neat rows of yellow-stalked chard, carefully netted raspberry bushes, diligently earthed-up rows of potatoes. All interspersed with home-made, Blue Peter-style garden contraptions – slug traps made from yoghurt pots, with an inch of beer at the bottom, CDs tied to bamboo canes, fluttering and glinting in the breeze, a low wall made of a random assortment of bricks and more or less square stones piled on top of each other. Even a semi-open greenhouse, which was just four half-height plyboard walls, and then some clear corrugated plastic above, but inside, basking in the warmth, a lush collection of tomato plants and strawberries.

What I realised was that there is a DIY quality to allotments, which reminds me of the atmosphere of the indie record scene that I grew up with. It’s a bit rough round the edges, a bit alternative, but at the same time extremely industrious. There’s an atmosphere of people working hard, and trying their absolute best to make things happen, but accepting all the imperfections that come from doing it yourself, as an amateur, rather than getting the professionals in. Still, I have to confess that I experienced this epiphany alone in our family group. The kids were patient enough, bless them, as they tried to fathom the reasons why I would want to look at someone else’s beans when I have my own growing at home, but finally my nine year-old came up with an analogy that was the only way he could make any sense of it – “This is like Lego for you, isn’t it Mum?”

read Tracey’s previous columns HERE.

Tracey’s new single ‘Why Does The Wind?’ (taken from her current album ‘Love And Its Opposite’) is out this week with new remixes by Metro Area’s Morgan Geist and others.
www.traceythorn.com

by Tracey Thorn.

MAY

Perhaps it was a mistake trying to grow “La Diva” cucumbers.

They’re sulky little madams at the best of times, cucumber plants. The slightest chill breeze, or a splash too much water on their feet, and that’s it. They freeze you out, first by standing there looking you in the eye and REFUSING to grow another inch, then tossing their hair at you as they wilt slowly down into their pots. “SEE! See what you’ve done to me with your neglect and cruelty … oh, I die, I DIE!”

Last year I won them over. It was a project, albeit a slightly demeaning one, and I was at their beck and call every minute of the day for the first month or so; opening and closing the window on request, pulling down the blind at midday, fanning them, fetching a little muffler in the evenings. And I was rewarded with a glut of cucumbers the like of which I never wish to see again. Ended up literally GIVING them away. A box outside the house said, “Help Yourself! Free Cucumbers! Take One! Please, Please Take One, No, Take Two, Wait, Come Back …”

This year I have of course been slightly busier, so yes, a miniscule degree of neglect has crept in. There was one day when it got too hot in there, I admit, and possibly an evening last week when the temperature dropped a little lower than I would have liked before I remembered to shut the door. And the variety I’m growing this year is – La Diva! So I have lost two out of the three plants. And lost them in a Tallulah Bankhead-worthy performance of suffering and decline. I am not going to rise to it. I have sown four more, and they are already through.

Meanwhile, outside the weather has been changeable, in a way that is always alarming to gardeners; but I’ve already sown carrots and lettuces, and planted out beans, tomatoes, and today, the dahlias. It was a bit warm and muggy out there, slatey grey clouds, and while I was digging it suddenly became very very still all around me, the way it does when the wind drops just before it properly rains. A strange, indefinable kind of stillness, but not quiet, as it was filled with the sound of hidden birdsong from every tree, all alerting each other to the change in the weather that was coming, and the promise of worms. Peaceful and busy at the same time.

read Tracey’s previous columns HERE.

Tracey’s new album, ‘Love And Its Opposite’, is out on May 17.

www.traceythorn.com
www.strangefeelingrecords.com

by Tracey Thorn

April

I get a bit mystical in the greenhouse. Which isn’t like me at all. I’m very down to earth, hence my love of gardening, and a bit too sarcastic by nature to buy into an overtly “spiritual” take on life. But I make an exception for this moment in the morning, at this time of year, when you go out with a coffee and step into the slightly steamy musty smell of the greenhouse and you wonder what will have happened overnight. The jobs that need doing really only take about five minutes, but once I’m in here I’m lost to the day. I’ll stand and stare at a little pot which has a few green shoots pushing through, a pot which yesterday was “just mud”. If you looked up in the kitchen, and glanced out the window and saw me there you’d think, “What IS she doing?” and all I am doing is looking at it in wonder and thinking that most banal thought, “It’s a kind of miracle isn’t it?”.

Kids of course can all be impressed by being allowed to plop a seed into a pot and then be shown it a few days later, a fairy tale bean uncurling before their very eyes, but if you like gardening I don’t think you ever grow out of that feeling of amazement. The prosaic fact that it WORKS, that what it says on the back of the seed packet will happen, does happen. That little bit of dried-up nothingness will turn out to contain an unstoppable force. And spring is the best moment of the gardening year in every single way. Everything is possible. All the leaves are long since cleared away, the veg beds are empty and dug, no mildew, no whitefly, no slugs. This year, yes THIS year, it will all go right, I will correct all the previous years’ mistakes, and nature will be kind and smile upon my every effort, and it will all look like it looks in the books.

It won’t of course. I’ll start out with the best intentions, and then get carried away. I’ll be swayed by a picture and try something “tricky” or something that doesn’t really like my soil, or something that needs steady constant nurturing, not the binge-gardening approach that my poor plants get from me. Last year there were too few lettuces (slugs), too many cucumbers (ended up giving them away in the street) and some dahlia disappointment. But the carrots were hole-free, and the Cuore di Bue tomatoes were totally heart-shaped, and the courgettes and aubergines were great, and the mammoth basil was ginormous even if it did smell funny. I keep a diary of it all and note down the failures and successes and vow each year to learn from my mistakes and to become wiser and just BETTER at it all. And maybe I do, maybe I do, but after the neatness and perfection and possibility of spring I know enough now to know that it will all get messy in the end and nature will do whatever it bloody wants to, despite me.

Tracey’s new single, ‘Oh, The Divorces!’ is out now as a free download from http://www.strangefeelingrecords.com/divorces.html or as a limited edition 7” (b/w a cover of Vampire Weekend’s ‘Taxi Cab’) from Apr 17, and the album, ‘Love And Its Opposite’, is out on May 17.

www.traceythorn.com