I've just been parcelling up old shirts and dresses, far too large for me now. But the material is so thick and good they will wear for at least another 50 years, and if I give them to an op shop they will end as rags or landfill, for in the flush of overconsumption op shops are flooded with more desirable modern garments, even if they don't last for more than a few months of wear.
So I'll keep them, for a use that probably will never come, the stranger who wants size 14 linen circa 1980, and will wear them for the decades they deserve. The strong, thick clothes are like our apple trees - 160 of them, and 121 apple varieties at last count, though a few didn't make it through the last drought, so I've no idea how many we actually have, only that it is extremely unlikely that I'll ever need to make apple crumble for 150 guests and ever be able to use a week's crop.
Modern apples are multipurpose, OK for both eating and cooking. Many old varieties are for cooking only, for most perfect apple crumble fluff, like Bramley seedling, which stores well for six months too. But who these days wants to keep six months' worth of apples, or has space for them? Some early ones, like Beauty of Bath and Bella Vista, are sharp and sweet and aromatic only if eaten straight from the tree. A day later they're like eating soft cotton wool.
They are connoisseur's apples, deliciously useful only for those who know if they were bred to eat fresh, store, cook or make cider.
Our garden began almost 50 years ago, mostly with seedlings and cuttings from an elderly neighbour's garden, so it's almost solely heritage plants, and ones not easily found again. Most gardens are replanted as new tenants move in, or remodelled, a bit like you remodel a kitchen, which I haven't done either. (The tiles are still as crooked as when I placed them there 37 years ago).
Gardens go through fashions as fast as clothes. Fifty years ago it was easy-care native shrubs, till gardeners realised that native plants need pruning to look garden neat.
There was a "pave everything and add sculptural shrubs" phase, a white garden phase, and a cottage garden phase, which didn't last as it's difficult to keep a cottage garden unless you have a full-time cottage gardener. I've probably missed some phases, lacking TV, but I think possibly we are in a "grow lots and preferably edible" phase now, which I approve of.
Meanwhile our lichened damson trees, the sloes, the old fashioned big red shaggy dahlia by the bedroom, and the tin-coloured hellebores, which have long been supplanted by varieties with bigger and more colourful flowers, have survived droughts, snow, frost, years with almost no rain and lush wet months when it seemed like leeches would take over the world. It's the garden I am used to, and used to eating from, and "home" as much as my kitchen. And they are treasures, every one, even if only to those who can recognise when they're ripe or will loom, and a long to make cider, or sloe gin.
Would anyone like a cutting of a damson?*
*Offer not redeemable till next year, due to the temporary feebleness of the gardener
This week I'd advise:
- Getting the tomatoes, basil, coriander, eggplant and first crop of corn in. OK, it's a gamble, and we may yet get a frost. But drape your garden with fruit fly netting if the night is suddenly chilly and the stars twinkle extra bright, and they should make it. No guarantees.
- Planting a heck of a lot of spuds. Home grown spuds are as different from the commercial ones as a home grown tomato. You can't have enough.
- Ripping up all paving, unless you need it around the house to see where the red bellied black snakes are sleeping, and planting parsley instead. Paving stores and reflects heat that warms the house and the world. Parsley is drought hardy and tastes better than a paving stone.
- Inspecting your neighbours and friend garden in case they have a mulberry tree. The fruit should be forming now and will soon give fruit for the first sorbet of the season, blue black and fragrant. Mulberries fruit lots, so their owners are inclined to share, especially if you share the sorbet.
- Sending all males to point Percy (discreetly) at your lemon tree. Lemon trees need much feeding, and usually don't get it. They did better in the days when the whole family gathered for Sunday lunch and every male did his duty by the lemon trees after the cup of tea.
- Picking what might be the last camellias and Daphne of the season, and the first roses too, and daffodils, because any idiot can arrange a vase of daffs. You just bung them in a vase. They are easy to grow, too- next February just bung the bulbs into the ground.
