I guess we'll never make potato farmers

...said TLOML sadly to me today, as we harvested our crop of potatoes.

Tragic, isn't it? I planted four or five big spuds a few months ago excited by the promise of 'potatoes for Christmas dinner'. And this is the return. Rubbish. How do you even peel a potato that's the size of your thumbnail?

I was so happy to move into a lovely garden flat, full of hopes of reactivating my green fingers. I remembered how much I used to love pottering in my little garden, growing, with some success, herbs, strawberries, tomatoes and more.

Since then I've lived with an ocean-side balcony and a janitor-managed rooftop deck (I know, poor me). I think it's ruined me forever. I can barely even keep a sturdy rosemary bush alive. Our lawn is sodden and patchy, the herbs were never any better than pale and mean, my geraniums got all leggy and straggly and fell over, and the peas and beans just disappeared in an overnight slug attack. Disappointing doesn't even cover it.

So while other gardeners are clearing, digging over, and getting excited for Spring, I'm just pleased we'll be leaving this garden behind by the time the weather warms up. Hopefully we'll trade it in for a small patio with just enough room for a table and chairs and that pot with the wilting rosemary bush in it. I think that's about all I can handle these days.

Autumnal Activities at Fox Corner

As you might have gathered, TLOML and I fell a little out of love with Fox Corner in the past few weeks. (Actually, he was never really in love with Fox Corner. He just tolerated it because I loved it. And it's cheap and spacious.)

Anyway, we're stuck here for a few months yes, so it's probably time to stop griping and start liking. And there is plenty to like. This is also a good time of year to not miss Malibu so much: what we gained there in year-round sunshine, we lost in crisp, chilly days perfect for walking across golden brown leaves, making soup, and generally being cosy.

So... this weekend was all about hearty, happy autumnal, Fox Corner-oriented activities.

We picked a lot of apples., from the lovely old apple tree, which is currently abundantly laden with fruit.

 While TLOML cut back stuff in the garden, I baked bread. Which is one thing I certainly never felt like doing in Rabbit Hutch Towers.

I went for a long walk on Hampstead Heath with an old friend, and set the world to rights among falling leaves and scampering, muddy dogs. When I came back, TLOML and I made bolognese with Zagami meatballs (so named for the recipe, taken from the First Family of New England's family history).

All in all it was a good weekend for making the most of being in Fox Corner, and London, now that Autumn is here.

 And Jack? He concentrated on building up a layer of fat to see him through the winter...

Medals all round

My husband, TLOML, did pretty well in a swim meet yesterday. As in, he won actual medals. So I made him a well-deserved, all American dinner.

He's a Southern boy, and used to swim for University of North Carolina, so I made fried chicken. It was good, of course, as all fried salty food is.

And for pudding I created a special medallist apple pie, with apples I picked earlier from the tree in our garden. We're resigned to staying in Fox Corner for a while yet, so we need to start making the most of its natural charms.

I think I should win some sort of 'all-American wife' medal for my efforts, personally.

When quirky stops being charming

I like quirks. We saw plenty of beautiful, beige flats when we were flat hunting. But the eccentric qualities of Fox Corner, like that unusual kiwi tree, the bottles embedded in the brickwork of our living room, and the knackered tongue-and-groove walls in the guest room, seduced me rather. I thought it was all quite charming, if a little rough round the edges.

Five months in, the charm is wearing off, and fast.

My British friends might say I've been spoiled by life in the US. The rabbit hutch was pretty high spec, for starters. And if the loo mysteriously became blocked, we just asked one of those nice doormen to fix it while we were out. Likewise if a lightbulb went, or when the blind cord snapped. It was fixed within a couple of hours, and without  us getting our hands dirty.

Malibu was decidedly lower spec. The electricity sometimes cut out if, for example, someone used a hairdryer while the telly was on. But it was easy to step outside to the fuse box - rusted from constant exposure to sea spray and salty air - and flip the switch to get the power back on. And while you were out there you heard the crash of waves and thought 'I bloody love Malibu', so that was nice. We had to use a dehumidifier constantly in that flat too, because of the constant sea mist - but again, you put up with these things as a consequence of living right on the beach. No grumbling.

Anyway, those are really just niggles. To be fair, if something actually broke, the landlord fixed it within a day. In California it is standard practice to re-carpet and repaint between every tenancy, too. So you always move into a shiny, new feeling flat.

It's amazing what you'll put up with when this is part of the package

What renters in the UK put up with is rather different. When we were looking for flats back in March some of my British friends raised an eyebrow at TLOML's insistence that he wouldn't live anywhere damp or draughty. 'Well, you expect a bit of damp in a ground floor flat, don't you?' they'd say. Or 'These old London conversions, you expect them to be a bit draughty, don't you?'

Well, no. Americans don't expect or intend to put up with dampness or poorly sealed windows. Or with flakey landlords. And yet... begrudgingly, or through lack of alternatives, TLOML has become a bit pragmatic, 'stiff upper lip' British about some of the shortcomings of Fox Corner.

When we moved into Fox Corner it was decidedly unready for us, but we overlooked that because we were so happy to be somewhere semi-permanent. The fact TLOML had to fit half the window locks himself we saw as a minor snag, since this place is a bargain and frankly we were running out of options. The annoying way the backdoor deadlock sometimes locks you out - and there's no key to the front door - we have found coping strategies for (TLOML puts his hand through the cat flap and unlocks it that way). We overlooked the standing water in the drain, which the landlady has ignored for 2 months, because we ran out of energy to bug her about it. We think the landlady's refusal to pay a gardener to prevent the aggressive kiwi vine from wrestling her pipes from the wall is crazy - but we decided to suck it up and pay for it ourselves, just this once, since it needed doing. We've looped a couple of miles of extension cable around the flat to make up for the fact there are no power sockets on half the walls. And so the list of 'quirks' and irritations continues.

We've coped... But we may just be at the end of our collective tether.  There are only so many times you can say 'ah well, it's cheap and it's big and isn't it fun to have a kiwi tree over the door?'.