Cultivated

This week's free post

FREE TO READ!

If you’re new to The Gardening Mind, thank you ever so much for joining this lovely community, now entering its fifth year here on Substack. It exists purely due to the support of its readers - thank you.

You’ll find a lot here - I’m sharing everything I’ve learned about gardens and garden design over the last thirty years years: have a scroll, check out the home page and the Index, join in the Chat…… or just dive in for a lucky dip. You will find THE FRIENDLIEST gardening community here, I promise.

I do spend an awful lot of time rabbit-holing, messing about with plants, doodling and reading about things I don’t have time to be reading about, and so I gather these things together under one roof and share them with you every month. So here’s August’s Cultivated, the collection of gathered-together bits and bobs which have caught my eye and lured away my brain this month. Prepare to RabbitHole……

It’s free to read and I hope that, if you’re new here, you enjoy dipping in and out of it.

In case you missed it…

I thought it might be helpful to gather in one place a list of what’s been happening here in The Gardening Mind over the last few weeks:

• Most importantly, here’s The Index - where you can find EVERYTHING

• Five extraordinary roses, a tiny garden full of clever ideas, a mystery solved and some exciting news

• MORE NEWS

• Flowers for the cutting garden - including an old-fashioned favourite

• How to Garden in August - What to Do and What Not to Do in the garden this month

• Digging Around with… Lisa Dawson

• Garden Design Dilemmas - a Before and After case study. Also: a strangely beautiful surprise, a controversial weed, and the best wasp repeller known to mankind

I have recently discovered Jenna O'Brien’s substack and I am obsessed with her colour charts:

I’m feeling that it’s ‘packed suitcase’ weather, though I did first read it as ‘poached suitcase’ which feels kind of appropriate at the moment.

Every so often I mention Rhubarb Rhubarb, the book I wrote by accident with my friend Mary Jane. It’s six years old now, but still available, and jolly good for salad recipes:

On the Rhubarb Rhubarb instagram, MJ has the simplest way with chicken by Claire Macdonald:

Ingredients

• 6 chicken breasts with skin on

• 6 tablespoons mango chutney

• 3 tablespoons grainy mustard

• 6 tablespoons olive oil

Instructions

• Mix the mango chutney, grainy mustard, and olive oil together in a bowl.

• Place the chicken breasts in an ovenproof dish.

• Smear the mixture thoroughly over the chicken.

• Cover and let it marinate in the fridge for several hours.

• Bake in the oven until cooked through and tender

Also in these photos are the substantial snacks which are often being served up here for supper instead of anything cooked: get some prosciutto, burrata, figs, ricotta, pomegranates and some honey, and then mix and match as you feel like it. Again, super simple, and COOL.

But on the subject of making it look so simple, Rukmini Iyer is unbeatable. I want to go and live at the very least next door to her, if she won’t let me move in:

A week at my table

If you didn’t know what engobage is, this is mesmerising.

As is this: drawing with a typewriter.

In a parallel universe I would make my family do this:

About to cut your lavender? This doesn’t look too fiddly and is something I would probably enjoy doing now as much as I would have done I was 6.

I cannot believe this is real, but it is. Just imagine spotting it at night:

Still in the garden, I do love my clients so much. They know that detail makes all the difference - why not build the smartest bin store in the world? And then thatch it?

For more bin store ideas, head here.

Back on the subject of colour. Analisa K Prince reminds us that the classical world was colourful:

I’ve seen The Odyssey twice in the last two weeks (don’t ask), and though I’m usually the first one to complain about watching something again, it was just as enthralling the second time round, if not more so. Especially looking out for the bits where Christopher Nolan cleverly didn’t use CGI. Were those lions and tigers and panthers really real?

And on the subject of The Odyssey, did you ever read The Luck of Troy? A lovely blast from the past from Lucy Writes History.

The August Journal made me laugh::

And also this:

This had never crossed my mind. I’ve always gone from left to right - which way do you read it?

Lots more from Jenna O'Brien - I desperately want to make myself a sticker chart:

Interesting from Laura Steven on writing.

We went to see Jesus Christ Superstar, and Sam Ryder hits some brilliant notes. But what I was amazed by was the fact that you can book your space to stand on the stage - it’s two hours of standing but you get to be right up there! I cannot believe my daughter who booked the tickets kept that option quiet. (Actually, I can believe it).

I want to stand and chat with the people in this queue:

When did we stop dressing up? Nathan Rollinson is fabulously elegant.

The moment when a ‘dust devil’ mini-tornado tears through Greenwich Park is not a moment I would have stood and videoed. Yikes.

Thank you AGAIN AlexTSmith - this time for the Manderley Press recommendation - I ‘accidentally’ ordered the whole collection and devoured China Court on the first day. Unputdownable. (The ending is a bit iffy - you’ll see what I mean when you get to it. But it absolutely does not ruin the book in any way and weirdly this isn’t a spoiler).

AND each book has its own bookmark. Simple touches like this make me buy books. There’s also matching wrapping paper too - I defy you not to be seduced.

Imagine living in the same house as this person:

And I LONG to have met these people IRL:

TRIGGER WARNING‼️

Spider photo incoming….

After I posted this, the consensus was that it was a Male False Widow Spider.

He was RIGHT BY by my bedside table? I don’t usually mind spiders but I did not like the cut of this one’s jib. He was deposited (alive) outside.

That’s it from me…..please look out for Saturday’s post: as it’s summer, we’re heading off on a trip:

Image: Veneto Secrets

Continue to keep cool, friends.

This has been a free-to-read post: I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Thank you for all those heart-shaped likes ❤️ that you’ve been leaving, and I’ll be back, properly, at the weekend.