The town house and the country house

Although we are moving less than a mile away, it does rather feel like we are moving from the country to the city.

Part of that is, of course, the location. The Sugar Cube sits on a cul-de-sac which terminates at the back of a school playground and a wood chip path which leads over the hill to the beach. Kids play out on our street all the time, skateboarding, bare foot, and just assuming the occasional car will give way. Which, of course, they do.

The property itself is pretty rustic too. The Sugar Cube is about 1500 square foot of house on a 9000 square foot lot. We have a large, rambling, somewhat chaotic garden. There are lemon trees, a grape vines, and we grow peas and strawberries and chard, as well as lots of herbs. Lady P has spent many happy hours making mud soup, chomping on freshly picked peas, and getting dirt under her fingernails. We hear woodpeckers and raccoons, and we smell the occasional skunk.

'I'm cooking, Mummy!'

Corn, peppers, peas and a lot of rubble

By contrast the new house (still working on a name) is on a relatively busy through-street in a part of Hermosa where there is a lot less space between houses. It's a 2300 square foot home on a 2600 square foot lot. Meaning that there isn't a lot of room for rambling, rustic gardening. Instead, we have a small astro-turfed patch which will be a good place for Lady P to ride her Cosi Coup in, but will be rather short on mud soup making opportunities.

Hanging out in the new yard

This makes me a little sad. But it seems Lady P is not going to be entirely bereft in her new urban dwelling.

After all, our new walk to downtown Hermosa is a half mile stroll along a nice wide stretch of woodchip. Last time we did it, it took about thirty minutes because Lady P was so entranced with the pine cones, rocks, trees to 'climb' and sticks along the way. I guess it felt like a wild adventure to her. Which is good enough for me.

And the other day I saw a raccoon on the house two doors up from our new house. It was trying to climb onto the overhead power cables (it's a Hermosa thing...) and I was oddly comforted. I guess country critters thrive in the urban density of 8th and Ardmore just as happily as they do in leafy Hermosa Valley.

Hurry up and grow

It's about this time of year that, if I were in England, I'd be planting peas and tomato seeds and crossing my fingers for a growing season warm and wet enough for stuff to grow, but not so warm and wet that the slugs eat it all. Because that did happen most years.

Anyway, here in LA those planting days are long behind us. We planted early partly just because we can. There was an unseasonable shower a week or so ago, but other than that it's been summer here since March.

We also had to plant early because - sobs and celebrations collide here - we will be leaving the Sugar Cube in August. Since we sowed, so should we reap. And hopefully soon.

Last year we planted early, and then nature swept in with plagues and pestilence. So we planted a second, late set of crops with mixed success. No, that watermelon never did appear in time for Thanksgiving.

Hopefully this year we'll get the chance to enjoy more of the fruits of our labors. The peas are already looking good, though I will need to break my new habit of picking off a pod and eating them with Lady P if we ever want enough to serve for dinner. The chard too has bolstered a few soups and salads already. And our sunflowers, planted in the toxic bed where we committed beetle genocide last summer, are almost as tall as Lady P already.

This weekend we added corn, coriander and zinnias, and talked encouragingly to our tomatoes. We pulled up yards and yards of apple mint roots, making a little room for the new stuff to grow. I think the next people to live here will thank us for that: it was taking over the whole bed in a creepily effective way.

 Fingers crossed thanks to our efforts we can enjoy a bountiful harvest before we move. And if the next Sugar Cube residents benefit too, so much the better.

One thing's for sure: we will miss this yard, and afternoons spent getting our hands dirty, clearing weeds, planting seeds and in Lady P's case, moving small amounts of sandy earth around with mysterious, but serious, purpose.

Redemption and optimism

Having gone nuclear, and cleared all the beetle infested plants, our garden was looking rather bare. And I felt the need for redemption.

So we planted watermelon seedlings at the weekend. Anywhere else this would surely be the height of optimism. According to the tag they take 97 days to produce fruit. Which puts our projected harvest somewhere in late November. Hmmm. There is a reason that watermelon salad isn't a traditional Thanksgiving dish, isn't there?

As well as watermelon, we planted tomatoes, peppers and edamame seedlings. Lettuce, basil and coriander seeds too. We also planted a few herbs, which seems less wildly hopeful. And I took the opportunity for a spring clean (albeit in August) to clear out the overgrown and increasingly bitter chard, and move a few salvaged plants to better spots.

The garden looks neat, tidy and just like a garden should at the start of the growing season.

Too bad Fall is officially around the corner.

On the basis that this is the city of year round sun, I'm hoping for the best and ignoring the fact that the rainy season usually commences in November. We can handle the odd shower, but we need temperatures to stay in the 20s (or 70s) for this renegade off-season harvest to work.

Keep your fingers crossed, please, for an extended Californian summer. If this goes well, I'm going to shoot for a double-crop of summer fruits next year. Hell, I might even plant a mango tree.

Under attack

We are at war. Nature, which we thought to be our friend, is assaulting us daily.

Mosquitoes are everywhere and I bear several large, extremely itchy bites to prove it. Flies too, hover in the kitchen, forcing us to keep our fruit bowl in the fridge. More to the point, forcing TLOML to leap about like a lunatic brandishing his electric bug-killing tennis racquet. Which in this heat (we are also under attack from the hot hot sun) is ill advised.

Worse, I think, than the flying bugs, are the horrid, stripey, creeping, munching bugs. The ones who took down my entire tomato crop and all the collard greens too. We returned from our month away to this depressing sight:

A Biblical plague of beetles...

..decimating the crops of which I was so proud

Elsewhere, though, there is abundance. The grapes are going nutso. So, sadly, are the raccoons. There again, we are under attack. They wake us at night as they scurry about the arbor snaffling our grapes. And they are totally undeterred by a loud 'pssssst'. Last night one of them pretty much flipped me the bird. To be frank, I'm a bit afraid of them. They're as big as foxes, bold as brass, and they can climb, too. Yikes!

Every morning the table is covered in the raccoon rejects, which ushers in another wave of attack: wasps hovering about getting drunk on grape juice.

Our previously pristine tables, after a night of raccoon partying

I shouldn't really complain about the raccoons and the wasps, as there really are plenty of grapes to go around. I snipped a few random ends of grapes just to tidy it up a bit and harvested 5lbs in about 5 minutes.

Thick clusters of grapes everywhere you look (and the arbor is about 15ft long)

The solution

So we're fighting back. Our defences are  up. The Executioner bug zapper is still wielded daily, and we've put up flytape too. Citronella in each room gives the mosquitoes a firm 'not here, not now' message. And we spray ourselves liberally with Off! every evening.

For every flat surface, a citronella tealight

As for the garden, well, I'm afraid we went nuclear. We paid a local gardener to spray an undisclosed volume of chemicals we'd rather not know about all over the infested crops. He's coming back to remove them and again, we're asking no questions about his methods.

Honestly, I'm not afraid of some hard labour in the garden, or a few beetles, but there are so many it gives me the heebie jeebies. Once they are gone - and with the help of some earplugs so I can ignore the raccoons - I may sleep peacefully again.

Everything's coming up roses

Well, not roses exactly. But fruits and vegetables and herbs, which are far more useful than roses. And almost as beautiful, if you squint. In amongst the rubble and sand, despite my ignorance, I'm having more gardening success than I could have imagined.

I have loved gardening since I wound up with a little patch of earth next to my first flat. I hadn't wanted a garden, but my perfect flat happened to have one. As the saying goes, when life hands you soil, make a garden. Over the next few years I turned it from a builders' yard into a chaotic, ill-managed fruit and flower garden. Sadly my passion for my little plot was matched only with a marked inconsistency in results. My wisteria never flowered, and my peas never germinated, but my crocosmia was triumphant and I always had plenty of rosemary. Well, it is pretty hard to stuff up rosemary.

Here in the Sugar Cube nothing has failed, yet. We are already enjoying lettuce, grown from seed, and oranges and lemons. Okay, I can't claim credit for the oranges and lemons - or the grapes - as they were here long before us. Still, I didn't kill them yet.

TLOML harvesting oranges.

 Same goes for the chard, which is adding a certain dark green umami to our minestrones, chopped salads and ramen.

Chard still going strong, and rocket coming up thick and fast

The tomatoes are getting big, and the corn looks like actual corn which is thrilling to me. I grew that!

The courgette and aubergine look pretty promising too.

Already some of the biggest courgettes I've grown

When I grow up I'm going to be a Japanese Eggplant

And at last we can eat a proper strawberries. American varieties are usually on a spectrum between bland and sour, and only sweet once cut and doused in sugar. But the ones from our garden taste just like a strawberry should. If this goes on we may never have to grace the Korean grocery again.

To what do I owe these newly green fingers? I guess it's just the right environment. Consistent sunshine is a huge bonus (so long as I remember to turn the sprinkler on). So, thank you Hermosa Beach, for helping a mediocre gardener succeed.

A British gardener, abroad

Not only is there plenty of space to furnish, there's a lot of land to cultivate in our rambling garden. We have inherited a vast (to my eyes) wilderness of pebbles, citrus trees, and terraces begging to be planted at the back of the house. As well as the fruit trees and grape vine, the former residents bequeathed us masses of chard, a small pomegranate bush and a junior avocado tree. But there's space for an awful lot more.

Frankly, I am intimidated. I've never gardened anywhere you need to actually water the garden in April. And my collection of well worn books of advice on how to cultivate fruit and veg just don't seem relevant anymore.

I love the commentary on the sweet potato being 'unacceptable as an accompaniment to meat'. This truly is a book for the most British horticulturalists.

And this - on chillis - 'don't even try a small piece unless they are part of your heritage'. 

Notes on growing sweet corn 'as far north as Yorkshire'. Sadly, irrelevant.

I guess gardening books don't travel terribly well. Thank heavens, then, for dear friends who saw the gap in our knowledge and knew just how to fill it.

The bible of Californian horticulture

Thank heavens too for Home Depot, and their large and inexpensive nursery. We have started to fill the gaps in the garden: with corn, eggplant, lettuce, and tomatoes so far. I'm spending hours poring over my Sunset book to figure out if that strange mottled beetle is friend, or foe, and if/how exactly to 'pinch out' a Serrano pepper. I'm getting some good advice on how much water to give a grape vine and citrus trees when you live somewhere with no rain. And I'm building little rock boundaries around my plants, to retain the water - which is something I remember seeing on a Comic Relief film about how African communities could survive a drought.

In my wildest dreams, when I started cultivating my little London garden a decade ago, I couldn't have imagined I'd ever be drought-proofing a pomengranate bush.

We furnished it! Sort of.

I know you've been worried sick about how we've furnished our outdoor space. Allow me to put your mind at ease.

We bought a cool outdoor rug for not a lot at Gumtree, our favourite 'cute stuff' shop in Hermosa. That, and the bistro table and chairs, mean the patio is done. Complete. You want to lounge out there? Grab a cushion from inside and prop yourself up that way.

We also inherited a knackered old table and benches from former Sugar Cube occupants. And found two incredible bargain dining tables, which I have sanded, and primed, and painted for outdoor use. As one of them was a Pottery Barn closing down sale $150 bargain, and the other bought for $75 from the sidewalk section of a Salvation Army store, I took a fairly slapdash approach to painting them. Thick brush strokes, drips and all. The expression 'if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well' did not apply.

Still, they look jolly nice. Throw in a handful of IKEA chairs and some little solar paper lanterns, and we are all set. For at least a season or two, till that paint peels off and the pine splits.

As for the office deck, and that sunny spot, I think we'll worry about them next summer. Rome wasn't built in a day and the Sugar Cube garden will not be finished in a day (or a year, even), either.

Furnishing the Sugar Cube

Furnishing the Sugar Cube itself is no great challenge. Its modest size will happily accommodate our modest furniture. We had to buy some bookcases and a new sofa bed and that's about it.

Furnishing the garden which surrounds the Sugar Cube is not so easy. As well as the lovely, pebbled backyard we have a patio alongside the living room, and a newly landscaped area next to the office.

The backyard, complete with grape arbour

The office's backyard

And to fill all these various, spacious spaces, we have... a small bistro table and two chairs.

The right thing to do, for the long term, is to go and buy a good, solid teak dining table and chairs. The arbour is about 15 foot long, and is crying out for a long Italian-style table. Then we need a picnic table or a bench, or both, for the space by the office. A breakfast-sized table and chairs for the patio, which is closest to the kitchen so a natural spot for morning coffee in the sunshine. And maybe some lower seating there too, so we can chill outside while Lady P learns to walk / ride a bike/ skateboard on the patio. Oh, and a couple of loungers for this sunny spot in the backyard.

My guestimate suggests that to furnish the entire outside space the way we'd like, we'd need to sell the baby, or a kidney, or both. So it's time to be creative (or, as some might put it, cheap).

I know, I know, first world problems.

Rich pickings

Regular readers may remember last year's bumper harvest at Fox Corner. We, of course, couldn't hope for the same from our humble little yard this year.

Happily, my parents live five minutes away and have an abundance, nay, an excess of fruit.

This represents about 5% of the current apple crop

So many plums my dad has had to prop the tree up.

To think I always cite 'the wonderful stone fruit' as one of the many great things about California. And here I am with perfect plums literally dropping off the trees. I must add this too the list of great things about Yorksire, and Britain (not that that list needs any further lengthening. It will be hard enough to leave as it is).

What on earth are two people going to do with all this fruit? They're busy too - they barely have time to pick it, never mind eat it. Or so I suspect. So I'm helping them out.

'Only take as much as you'll eat in the next two days', my mum said. They don't keep well, these apples. Well, Lady P enjoys an apple as much as me. Which is a lot. Plus half the apple ends up on the floor. Hers, that is, not mine. So I took this many.

These should keep me going for a day or two.

Think I'll go back later this week and get enough for apple pie. Just to help my parents out, you understand.

An English Country Garden

More gorgeous summer weather here: long, sunny days, bright blue skies with little fluffy clouds in them, and only a very occasional shower. It's the perfect weather for stretching out on a lawn with a glass of Pimms, or perhaps a cup of tea if it's before 11am.

Sadly, we have no lawn. Nor does most of Saltburn. At least not those of us who live in 'the town' ( the suburban streets that stretch out beyond the town centre are a different story). These terraces all have yards, instead. A yard, over here, is not the grassy area with trees and a white picket fence that Americans might be picturing. A yard is a small, paved outdoor area that is more about utility than leisure. It was a space to house your coal, dry your washing, and even house your outdoor loo, back in the day. Now we have the luxury of indoor plumbing, most yards are probably a more balanced mix of business and pleasure.

Ours is probably fairly typical. Yes, it houses our bikes and our bin. And we use it to hang our washing to dry on 'good drying days'. But we have space for a couple of pots of plants, a barbecue, and a place to sit.

It's a little crowded, but it works for us.

And for those who want more outdoor space, Saltburn has plenty of allotments - little patches of land for rent, to grow fruit and veg, flowers, or just have a little grassed area for chilling out in. I'm explaining it for the benefit of American readers, because I think the closest thing you have there are 'Community Gardens' in cities. But here, most cities and towns have allotments, in many cases a relic of World War II, when people were encouraged to 'dig for Britain'.

There are more allotments here than I've ever seen in a town. Walking out of Saltburn through the allotments it feels as if the allotments go on for longer than the town itself.

Allotment City

Neatly kept and well secured

Allotments are a lot of work, and if you don't keep yours up to a decent standard, the council will send you a strictly worded letter. Or, worse, take the allotment off you. So you really have to be out there once or twice a week, keeping up with your weeding and harvesting your crops.

Last year we rented the most cockamamie flat in London because of its garden - which we then admired through the window all summer as sheets of rain came down and turned the patch of lawn into a quagmire, and fat, rain-happy slugs ate all my peas. This year, I'm perfectly happy with our little concrete patch, our pots of herbs, and a place to sit and sip a beer while TLOML fires up the barbecue.

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.

Native flora

Agapanthus were everywhere in Los Angeles. They spring out from concrete planters in front of banks, the strips of lush green grass in Brentwood, flower beds in front of the Spanish style villas in the the Beverly flats, and even scrubby little rubble gardens in Malibu. For me they are the quintessential LA flower. I've no idea if they are native or not, but they certainly seem to do well over there.

I love agapanthus but had never managed to coax mine into flower in London. Seeing them on every sidewalk, stripmall and yard in LA, I never failed to exclaim 'I love agapanthus!', and then bored TLOML with the story of how mine had never flowered.

Not quite as prevalent, but just as quintessentially of the place they are in, are the magnolias of North London. Most streets in Dartmouth Park, Highgate and Hampstead have at least one magnolia tree proudly gracing someone's front garden. Many have two or more.

This time of year they are just gorgeous, laden creamy pale pink buds. As I bustle about my old manor, at least a couple of times I day, I exclaim 'I love magnolia'. If I'm on my own I say it silently, inside my head, by the way.

I had a nice chat with a man at the nice Zimbabwean-run garden centre in Kentish Town about the possibility of growing a magnolia tree in a tub. If I'm prepared to feed and water it (I am) it will be entirely possible for me to have my very own magnolia tree at Fox Corner, and take it with me when we leave in a couple of years time. I am almost more excited about this than the kiwi tree.
 
It's funny, but I can't think of a flower, tree or shrub from New York that had the same effect on me. Is it possible there is no such native New Yorker? Or is that just another example of my blindness to the charms of Manhattan? I may never know...