The Orchard Studio

A Confession

I thought I would use this blogpost to confess to the world my chronic phone addiction and how this has recently lead me to some very dark places.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, I managed to get through life without a smart phone, or in my case an Iphone. I had the same little mobile phone for years and waited until I got home to read my emails or do anything I needed to do online.  Then a few years ago I bought myself an Iphone and I've been hopelessly in love and at the same addicted to it ever since. And I thought it was time to come out and confess... My name is Emma. And I'm an iphone addict.

There have been many highs and lows throughout my relationship with this device. It certainly spends more time with me than any of my loved ones and the thought of losing it puts me into a panic similar to losing my child in a shopping centre, only more so.  It's enabled me to become far more efficient at work, I can respond quickly to clients, I can keep up to date with emails, and I can stay in touch with Twitter or Facebook or any number of other social websites.  I am never ever alone.

I am hooked on Instagram, and over the last year have connected with many like-minded photographers and taken lots of photos of my dogs, my daughter, my garden and anything else in my life. And along the way also found masses of great camera apps which means hours of me fiddling on my phone. I love being able to keep up with all the latest news, other blogs, sites like Pininterest as well as the Guardian App and of course Angry Birds.

Some evenings I glance at my loved ones, also glued to their phones, either texting, on Twitter, Facebook or surfing the net and I miss the days before we had our phones.  We have allowed them to encroach far too much into our lives and in many ways they have become a blessing and a curse.

This week I briefly 'lost' my phone. The appalling panic which ensued has made me realise how much I have allowed this small shiny thing into my life. I experienced a temporary horror that everything in my world is actually on that phone, that if I were to lose it I would lose everything. Which of course is utter rubbish, but when you are hopelessly addicted as I am, it feels like that...

So what's to be done? I've tried cold turkey in the evenings, hiding it upstairs and instead of tweeting and texting and reading emails forced myself to read a book, but before to long I've found an excuse to creep up and find it again. I'm so lost to it that I'm even kidding myself these days!

Whatever did we do before we had these phones? How have they wedged themselves in so thoroughly into our lives? Answers on a postcard. Or a text, or via Twitter, or Facebook please.

 

 

 

Allotment Alert

 

By some sheer fluke, I appear to be the proud owner of an allotment, which is but 20 yards from my house. This all came about last week and I am extremely excited about getting stuck in. I had been offered a large portion of a client's garden to grow veg on this year, but I wasnt sure if I had the time, however this plot came out of the blue and as it's so near to home I'm going to make it mine! In the photo above, mine is the rough grassy bit beyond the tall dead plants! It's very rough...

 

This is my fantasy allotment, painting by Johnstoa.com

The main things going for it are the amazing beautiful view which stretches towards Solsbury Hill as well as the sheer size, of 25 metres by 5 metres wide, it has a plum tree and a large old metal water tank and is really easy to access so I'm chuffed. The downside is that it needs some serious grunt work to get it useable. The ground looks as if it has not been cultivated for a very long time and I'm going to need to bring in the heavies to help get it terraced for beds and ready for planting.

 

However, at the moment I'm dreaming of making it my place to hide, perhaps at some point it might also have a shed but at least for now a bench to sit and admire the view and all my gorgeous vegetables as well as flowers for cutting.  I'm rather hoping it will end up looking a bit like this once the prep work is done!

 

Welcome to 2012!

 

I'm going to spare everyone the usual 'gosh I havent blogged for months' as I actually have not bothered to blog for months and months, but I realised the other day that I was missing it and also had some interesting web enquiries lately from it as well as Google searches which kept showing me my own badly neglected blog!

So here I am.

This year I pledge to use up the Polaroid film languishing in my fridge which is extremely out of date and to also visit more gardens. Last year was taken up with dashing about and running the gardening school as well as taking on a lot of new work, and so I did not get the chance to take as many photos as usual. The polaroid here was taken at Abbotsbury Sub-Tropical Gardens in Dorset back in late August.

This year sees some interesting new projects in the pipeline, including a commission to design a garden for a very unusual listed property in Bath. Hopefully more of that later.

I am also going to be moving into more commercial work this year as well as writing and hot off the press, the much discussed (on Twitter) WTF Gardening project, founded with Sara Venn will be making an appearance very soon, via a Twitter account and a new blog. We are hoping to bring some laughs to gardening, because sometimes we both think it needs it.

I am working alongside the wonderful Dolphin & Hewer this year who will be helping me to develop my work interests as well as inspiring me with new ideas for writing and all manner of other exciting things!

Bring on 2012!

Spring has sprung

I can't believe I have not blogged since January but I have been busier than ever with my design business as well as getting Gardening School started. We are nearly there at last and I can't wait to get started. Meanwhile Spring is finally here after a long and bleak winter.

I have been neglecting my photography lately too and since discovering a few Iphone Apps have become very lazy. My Polaroids have remained unused in the cupboard, including my extra special find, a Polaroid SX-70 Sonar in mint condition.  Current favourite is Instagram. This little app is great as you can take photos on the move and perk them up with lots of different filters, particular favourites are the lomo one and the Polaroid one of course. Then post it on Twitter or Facebook if you want to.

 

I also like Hipstamatic, which has different lens and film to choose from. The design of this App is fantastic, it turns your phone into a mini Lomo camera and makes photographing your breakfast a lot easier. If that's your thing of course.

 

 

A good free App  is Plastic Bullet - this is very easy to use and you can scroll through various options for the photograph you've taken and choose the one you like best. This wind up Gnome was taken using this App.

 

The Bath Gardening School Goes Live!

High excitement at the Orchard Studio with the announcement of our new gardening school website going live.

After months of hard work and a lot of emailing and changing things and testing the site and at the same time keeping up with day jobs, it has finally happened.

I wanted to get the gardening school going some years ago but finding the right time when things were more quiet proved impossible, until the end of last summer when I decided it was now or never.

Twitter proved to be an amazing way of finding great people to teach as well as new contacts. The obvious place to hold the courses was at my beloved Botanical Gardens and I was lucky that the council agreed to us using the facilities. I thought long and hard about the kinds of subjects I would want to learn and talked to a lot of people about what they wanted. The result being the current schedule of courses.

I wanted the day to be good fun and for people to be really entertained and informed and fed lots of cake and given a good lunch. 

We are very lucky to have Glenn Humphries, the Curator of Bath Parks coming to give the first guided tour of the gardens. Glenn has many years of experience and knowledge of the gardens and will be talking us through the many amazing trees and planting.

James Alexander-Sinclair from Blackpitts is taking the first course date and I'm reliably informed that he is very good value and extremely entertaining. No pressure on him then!

www.thebathgardeningschool.com

 

Twitter - What's it all about?

 

Alarmingly the end of the year is closing in and as usual I can't believe where the time has gone. But that's getting old for you.  It's been an interesting and sometimes difficult year but one of the most unusual developments has been my unlikely involvement and subsequent chronic addiction to Twitter.

 

Having scorned the whole idea for ages as being something people with too much time on their hands do, I was finally swayed by a friend who is madly keen on it and I began slowly dipping my toe into what turned out to be an insane, ongoing drinks party, full of the most diverse and sometimes eccentric people in the land.

 

The land of Twitter is a strange one. It takes time to get the hang of how the rules go and it also takes a measure of boldness and front otherwise I found, you never get anywhere. Having starting 'following' some people (and this whole follower/following thing has slightly the wrong connotations for me) slowly people started to 'follow' me back and then some conversations ensued. Those of only 140 characters of course.

It's easy to get the wrong end of the stick on Twitter and I've witnessed many misunderstandings and fallings-out as well as friendships forged and a lot of mutual support and kindness. The Twitter pendulum swings both ways from thoughtful and well mannered, to, well.. the opposite. There have been times when the self-important inflated egos of some has been difficult to take, and indeed in the 'real' world I would not bother to hang around these people, but I've learnt to take the rough with the smooth and the net result has been that I have been fortunate to meet many highly entertaining, thought-provoking, kind and funny people. Some actually in the flesh it turns out.

Having already 'done' internet dating many years ago and met my husband via this approach, I was not shy about the idea of talking to complete strangers online, which sounds pervier than it is oddly enough, and sometimes meeting some of the people from Twitter has had that frisson of excitement in terms of what will they be like? Will we get on? And, I'm pleased to report, so far so good, obviously not with an eye to romance though!

My new gardening school business would have taken a whole lot longer to organise and set up without the amazingness of Twitter, within weeks I had been able to contact, meet and eat cake with a number of really great people who have been central in me being able set up the school, even to the point of once asking into the Twitter ether if anyone knew a certain well-known writer. Within minutes I had the phone number of his agent. Magic!

Once I got past the annoyance of naked ladies following me, spammers galore and a lot of dross, it seems that there is a community of solid and good people, who often take time to find. I keep updating who I'm following to include a diverse range of interests, otherwise the whole gardening world can get a little tedious with a lot of Twitter accounts being used to constantly flog garden tat no-one wants.

I would be lying if I said I don't get annoyed at times by the cliquey-ness of the gardening world as they all seem to know each other and it's hard to break into that circle but generally with some exceptions, most have been welcoming and inclusive and a lot of fun. Being self-employed and often working on my own, I find that being able to dip in and out of these conversations is really good for keeping me going particularly on deadly dull days in the winter when I'm often confined to the drawing board or doing my accounts. I've also managed to waste entire days on Twitter and been told off countless times by various members of my family for being 'obsessed'. That does not however stop my teenage daughter for using Twitter to berate me on my mothering skills, or my husband to request cups of tea when he is in a different room.

 

They could well be right. My name's Emma. And I'm a Twitter addict.

 

Thank you for reading my blog and have a great Christmas, even though it seems the entire country are either stricken by the lurgy or snowed in, or both.

 

 

Gnoming

I miss my blog, I miss the connection with other bloggers, and I miss thinking about what I'm going to write next.

This last year has taken me by surprise, my life has become busier than ever, not least because my business is so full-on but also Grace is taking her GCSEs next year, and that is a demanding time not only for her but also those who facilitate her endless lifts, washing, meals and general welfare,in other words, Tom and me.

My blog has been pushed down the endless to do list which goes wherever I go. I used to be a very keen blogger and make sure my posts were regular and kept up to date. However, I feel I've let the side down and wish that I had more time, that I could somehow squeeze some extra hours out of my week, but at the moment this seems impossible.

 

I am grateful though that I am busy and that I am working on some really great projects and that I have been lucky enough to not only survive so far through this scary economic state we are in, but actually thrive.  My gardening school is going great guns and I am going to be announcing the first dates very soon, I have been amazed at the good-will and positive energy which has surrounded me during the setting up of this business and I really cannot wait to get started next year.

Meanwhile we are all working hard towards breaking up for Christmas. Traditionally this has been a time of fear and loathing for me, but over the years I have learnt to embrace and perhaps even love Christmas and especially this year when I will be lucky enough to spend it with a few people who are closest to my heart.

So I hope that all of my blogging friends out there are all well and happy and I shall do my best to come and say hello to you, perhaps some of you in person very soon.

 

This is just some of the gnome madness at my studio.

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Teenage Tantrums and Corsham Court Gardens

 

Yesterday, after several hours moaning loudly about the state of our garden and how much I hate living in our house, my teenage daughter Grace sighed deeply and with a wisdom beyond her years, said very calmly 'get your coat mum, you've got to stop wigging out and stressing, I'm taking you to see a garden'.

 

 

Twenty minutes later we arrived at Corsham Court, yet another place I have never got round to visiting with a gorgeous understated garden.

We mooched around in the main house and ooohed and aaahed over the amazing paintings and art then hot-footed it out into the soft autumn sunshine where peacocks roamed about  and the sheep were nibbling on the fields on the other side of the ha-ha.

This place has Capability Brown written all over it, except that off to one side of the grounds was a beautiful arrangement of smaller walled gardens, stuffed full of lovely autumn planting and acres of topiary, all with a (and I hope they don't mind me saying this) slightly let go feel, which I really love.

 

 

My daughter led me around by the arm as if I was slightly demented, and although she is not a great fan of the outdoors I was really touched she had thought to take me to these gardens as they cheered me up and made me forget my tantrums at home. Although the planting was pretty standard, Verbena bonariensis by the square yard, Penstemons, miles of Buxus, considering we are at the tail end of the season, it was engaging and interesting enough for even the most jaded of garden types!

 

I tried to fit a pair of stone owls into my handbag but they would not fit, which was a shame as I have not seen such characterful creatures in a garden for a long while, there was also a rash of gorgeous massive urns and huge metal plant supports, shaped like upside down bells which were spread out throughout the large walled garden borders.

This garden also had an inspiring planting of six large Catalpa bigonioides which were luminescent in the late afternoon sunshine, their lime leaves lighting up the entire garden and giving fantastic structure planted in a circle around a dipping pond. Flanked by red brick walls and with several well thought out benches, I could have easily been left there for the rest of the week.

We did'nt quite make it out into the parkland as the only thing on our minds was getting a cream tea, but several times around the walled bits was enough anyway but there is a lot more to be explored.

This garden felt well loved, but not overly fluffed up, without the pretensions and strangle hold that a lot of National Trust gardens have, slightly chaotic in parts, good structure and without doubt a garden I would revisit many times again. The added bonus being that it was not overly busy so I could have a brief fantasy moment that this was my garden and not the wild and woolly mess that was still waiting for me at home.

And all this for only £2.50 for adults and £1.50 for children, although quite who the child was yesterday is up for debate.

 

 

Autumn Pinks

 

As my deadline for Bath Life was last Friday and I had not managed to get my copy in on time I had to rush off to the Botanical Gardens today to get some images to go with my article. This fuchsia caught my eye, how amazing is this colour? They are planted in a spot under the trees by the path which winds around to the Acer garden and I had to stop and touch one! Staggering around with a vile cold and feeling like death, I also came across this:

 

Euonymus alatas, another must if you like pink, and a really good compact but pretty shrub.

 

Now back to bed and where's the Lemsip?

 

 

Rare Autumnal Domesticity

Having returned from our long holiday in Wales it felt like some nesting at home was needed.  So I decided to make these lavender biscuits with some flowers which had come on later than the rest. They were delicious, their taste being slightly floral and buttery at the same time. If you hate Parma violets or rose creams then probably give these a miss!

A bracing walk around Rainbow wood yielded some hazel nuts although these are a bit early, together with sloes which are now bathed in gin and sugar and residing in the kitchen cupboard.

I also made some damson and apple cheese, which has the consistency of membrillo and will be gorgeous with goats milk cheese or roast lamb.  These I made up by using damsons from our tree, together with apples also from our trees and sieving like mad and boiling up with sugar.  All of this whilst wearing a pinny and watched by my slightly bemused other half who is not used to such a house-wifely vision.

These hawthorns were amazing and I wanted to pick some to make jelly but did'nt bring enough bags with me, but I will go back this weekend and get making again. Not sure if him indoors will be able to cope with that!