9/11 Where I Was Not

 On our first and my only trip to the USA, Rob and I spent a week in New York being total tourists, before moving on to visit friends Stan and Jen in Medford Lakes, NJ.

If our original itinerary had worked out, we'd have been in New York and would probably have done the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building on the 9th September. Once actually there, the more enigmatic Empire State came first, but might not have done if it hadn't been closer to our hotel. This budget hotel had roaches in the shower and smelled mouldy, but that was ok, it was exciting, we were in the Big Apple!

Luckily, because of various minor complications like Stan and Jen being on holiday in the West Indies and because BA's discounted airmiles tickets weren't available when we'd originally planned to go, we'd reversed the order of our trip and went to Medford Lakes after New York. We never did get to the World Trades Centre and I am eternally grateful for minor complications.

Watching the events on live TV, while in the safe living room of Stan and Jen's charming log-cabin home on the shore of the lake, was nonetheless terrifying. None of us could believe what we were seeing. We spent half the day frantically trying to phone home, to reassure our family in England that we were safe. All the mobile lines were completely overloaded and landlines weren't much better. Eventually managed to get an email through to my in-laws in Leeds and asked them to please phone my mother in Hastings to reassure her.

We carried on watching the inadequate TV reports as Stan managed to get in touch with his cousins in New York, who thankfully were safe too. Meanwhile almost as alarming was seeing that there was nobody on top of this. Politicians were panicking and TV channels had no known pattern, no appropriate template to follow, on how to report an event of this magnitude which was actually happening to their fellow American citizens, not people in far off lands of whom they knew little and cared less.

The pristine, primped and botoxed newsreaders unemotionally reported on whatever garbled messages emerged from the authorities, between jollifying adverts and distraught and panic-stricken vox-pops. Those presenters were without a tear out of place and the requisite perfect, toothy grins were still plastered on their shiny faces, their body language mocking the horrors they were failing to report in any meaningful way.

There was no information.

Later in the day I went alone for a swim in the lake, it was peaceful and temporarily soothing.

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I don’t deliberately try to mark 9/11. The stress (mine), the horror (everyone's) and the fear (the victims), is something I'd like to forget, although I won't. The only events which have come close to affecting me that much since are the horrific Grenfell Tower fire and most recently the impossibly hopeless evacuation of desperate people from Kabul. The only earlier event to have the same effect was, as a child, watching reports from Aberfan. I felt I was one of those children, experiencing that horror.

Ospreyitis Part 2

 I first encountered ospreys - well a single osprey - in about 1965 or 66 when parents drove us to Aviemore for a summer holiday. As a moody teenager all I wanted to do was wander around on my own (certainly not with younger brothers!) or stay at the ice-rink where a few cool guys might be found. However on one particular day we were all piled, partly against our wills, into the car, and driven to Loch Garten where, father claimed, we would see the only ospreys nesting in the UK at that time.

I remember a slightly misty, tree-lined loch and eventually, after much scanning with binoculars, a bird flying in the far distance which father was certain was an osprey. I had no reason to doubt him, he was a twitcher before it was so named and knew his birds. This experience made an impression, I never forgot it or the story of the Loch Garten ospreys, whose nesting location was kept secret and guarded by devotees to prevent peculiarly-minded people from stealing their eggs.

Stealing eggs from wild birds was made illegal in 1954, which didn't stop certain avid collectors who cared not a jot for the actual birds, from continuing to take them.  

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Swimming vs. Sewage

I learned to swim in warm, tropical seas and though the English Channel is my only option these days, I love it. The local sea area from Beachy Head to Hastings pier was recently declared a Marine Conservation Zone and has amongst many other delights, rare chalk reefs, seahorses, dogfish, many spawning species of fish and rock boring piddocks who glow in the dark!

Our beaches are stony at high tide, covered in a fascinating variety of smooth, rounded pebbles from common flints and chert to quartz, jasper and indeterminate geodes with tiny crystals glistening in their crevices. 

Low waters reveal gleaming sands for building castles and canals, there is the remains of a shipwreck, the Amsterdam which foundered in 1749, a  petrified forest and rockpools with a myriad tiny seashells and creatures all enjoyed by locals and holidaymakers alike. The clean waters and beaches have been a huge joy for us all during two Covid summers, until earlier this month.

At the height of the summer holiday, swimming became unwise and unsafe. A major sewage spill near the railway track at Bulverhythe flooded beach-huts, contaminated many miles of sea and beach. Southern Water, whose responsibility it is, spend as little as possible on maintaining the infrastructure whilst awarding their grandees and shareholders huge bonuses from the charges which we have to pay to them, to get fresh water and sewerage.

To say the people who live here are angry is an insulting understatement. Our Marine Conservation Zone is contaminated, beach hut owners lose their prized huts, the Hastings beach-launched fishing fleet may have to go elsewhere and many tourists surely will so many local livelihoods are threatened.

Is this the price we must pay, to live on a fairly crowded island, surrounded by waters which though beautiful are a mere pawn in political games and uncared for by capitalism? It damned well shouldn't be!

Decluttering vs. Stuff

Decluttering, rejection of  'stuff' and the Kondo type of minimalism have become so fashionable, one is expected to feel guilty if disinclined to comply. But this fashion not only ignores individual creativity, it ignores the history that so many people keep safe, around them. 

Possessions are about so much more than style. I have my grandmother's sari, I never wear it but that's not the point. I have more things belonging to her and others of her generation, and subsequent generations. I have things which my children have made, things I've made including many clothes. I don't wear those clothes now and I don't look at the children's creations very often, but I know where they are, and what they signify. 

And I have books, so many books they'd give Ms Kondo the heebie-jeebies! They're not ornaments, they are culture. 

The Fairweather Gardener - A Sucker for Succulents

I've recently realised that I’m a cactus collector, well cacti and other succulents. This seems to have been my unintentional lockdown project. I spent a lot of time potting offsets and cuttings of my houseplants.

The autumn before covid 19 struck, I'd bought a small, three-tier, wooden shelving unit with attractive turned uprights, which was narrow enough to sit on the window board in my conservatory. At first I put a few small cuttings of jade plants (crassula) and a lot of baby spider plants on it. I soon discovered that on a sunny day, I could put the spider plants and one or two other rooted babies outside with a sign, “Houseplants Free to Good Homes” and they’d be re-homed within a couple of hours. 

So the shelving unit now displays some of my small to medium succulents beautifully. On the top shelf is a bears-paw (cotyledon tormentosa), a small jade plant with unusual pointed leaves, a tall, variegated jade plant (crassula ovata variegata) and a long crassula perforata in a beautiful artichoke pot, whose stems are beginning to hang down.

On the middle shelf in a red and green pot is an echinopsis cactus with several babies who need potting on. There's a second echinopsis sharing a low dish with cobweb houseleek (sempervivum) and between the two are my latest editions, four small pots whose occupants I'm not yet sure how to care for so I'm being careful. Two are types of lithops (living stones) which I know can be tricky, one is a string-of-pearls (senecio) which I'm assured is easy, and the fourth is a tiny, unidentified, globe cactus which I'm hoping is as easy as the echinopsis.

The bottom shelf houses another echinopsis, an echiveira (they come in lots of varieties, mostly look the same so I don't know which type this is!) a sad Christmas cactus which I'm nursing but may not survive (I overwatered the poor thing) and some Hawarthia in a strange Spanish pot with crude butterflies decorating it.  

In the pot to the right of the shelving are sanseveiria (snake plant), echinopsis and haworthia which have all been in one very overcrowded pot for ten years, I seriously need to free them! Beside them on a stand are another haworthia below, and above a green jade plant in a lovely red glazed pot. This is only about half of my windowsill collection of succulents and that number doesn't include two large, potted gasteria verrucosa which sit on the floor and are flowering in the sun. 

There's also Mama cactus, who was my first echinopsis and has produced all of the others. She's very fierce, lives mostly outdoors, she flowers every summer and lives in a colony with many daughters and grand-daughters. They will shortly be going out onto the patio, when I can find my thickest gardening gloves.

 

Ospreyitis - Part I

Monty nested at Dyfi 2011-2019

One of my favourite activities has begun again in the past couple of weeks, osprey watching! There's 
no osprey nest in Sussex and that's a fact, they're big birds and the county has a large human population, somebody would have noticed, but I'm told a few fly over on their annual migrations. Not that I've ever seen one of those, I do my osprey watching almost entirely online. 

I began in 2014 with the nest at Dyfi Osprey Project, which was one of a few raptor nests with a dedicated webcam. The resident pair, Monty and Glesni were model parents and their efforts at raising their two chicks Deri and Gwynant. The webcam had sound and I learned how loud young ospreys can be when demanding fish from their father, the female chick, Deri was deafening. I occasionally looked in on the Glaslyn webcam, but didn't follow regularly. At the same time I was also watching peregrine falcons in Worcester and a family of kestrels who nested on St Andrews Church in the same city. 

The next year I still watched the Worcester birds and saw Monty and Glesni successfully rear three chicks but I also began also watching the Glaslyn osprey nestcam with the legendary Mrs G.  The Glaslyn nestcam had no sound, but the fascination was episodes of  'Ospenders', watching the battle for the favours of Mrs G, whose mate of 10 years (known as 11/98, his ring number) had failed to return. 

Mrs G was first courted by a young Scottish osprey ringed CU2, who was named Jimmy for obvious reasons. Next to arrive was Blue 80 who was actually one of Mrs G's sons from 2012, but CU2 Jimmy saw him off, then Jimmy left too.  Mrs G laid several eggs but they probably weren't fertile. Then another young male arrived, and stayed. He was named Aran because he had no ring and he raised two chicks with Mrs G that summer.

The following year (2016, keep up!) I followed three osprey nests and gave up on the Worcester peregrines, who weren't nesting, and the Worcester kestrels whose camera had failed.  Mrs G and Aran at Glaslyn and the Rutland Manton Bay pair of Maya and 33/11 all raise three chicks apiece. Monty and Glesni at Dyfi, reared two, although the female chick, Ceri, fell while still a novice flyer and died of her injuries on the nest - drama and heartache.

By now I was totally hooked on these fantastic birds! Osprey are an ancient species of raptor who have evolved as exclusive fish-eaters over many millions of years, they aren't hawks or eagles. They are hugely successful and range over every continent except Antarctica. They were hunted to near extinction in Europe and were extinct in the UK for 50 years. They're now nesting successfully in Scotland, England and Wales.

The Fairweather Gardener - Indoors

Plants waiting to go outdoors

As a fair-weather gardener, much of my gardening takes place indoors. My parents always had a few  houseplants and dad was quite interested in cacti, the weirder the better. I’ve always liked houseplants, but for ages I seldom had much space for them where I lived. 

Our first proper home, in Stony Stratford, was a tall, period terraced house, whose south-facing windows were beautifully proportioned and elegant with original, eighteen-paned sashes and shutters, but had no window ledges suitable for houseplants. The rear of the house had small, even older windows which faced into a wide, sunless alleyway. I tried, but killed every houseplant except spider plants, aechmea (urn plants) and a rubber tree.

We eventually moved to Huddersfield and a much more conventional, if second-hand, Barratt home, with south facing windows and a wide box-window in the living room. Most houseplants thrived there even in winter and despite the single glazing, except for the rubber tree which finally succumbed after it grew too tall and I tried decapitating it. The final grandchild of my urn plant also eventually expired.

Now in East Sussex, I have a small, not very elegant south-facing conservatory, maybe 3 x 4 metres, which I’ve stacked with plants. I’m fairly certain myspider plants are descendants of the original ones, I also have several generations of crassula ovata, gasteria verrucosa, echinopsis eyrisii and howarthia. Anyone who knows their houseplants will observe this indicates I have an interest in succulents!

However I’ve also got more conventional leafy plants, including a weeping fig (ficus Benjamina) which came from IKEA in Leeds nearly 30 years ago. Then there are three different varieties of dracaena, self-perpetuating zebrina, four-year-old geraniums (zonal pelargoniums), two poinsettia and, waiting to go into the garden, thumbrgia which already have lovely orange, black-eyed flowers, Lewisia and a bright purple celosia. The larger cactus will go outdoors soon as well.

All I need is the weather to warm up a little more and I’ll become an outdoor gardener again.