Clare's Guide to a Perfect 40th

1. Rise early because you no longer need 9 hours sleep

2. All old people should take some gentle exercise; run wildly into the sea, fall in and swim as far out as possible. Warning: this may upset youthful injuries such as broken toes

3. An emotional challenge like a lady's 40th requires a varied breakfast. Take one breakfast buffet of fruits, hams, cheeses, bread and demolish thoroughly

4. Embrace your wobbly bits by hitting the nudist beach. The startling view of your white flesh in deep crystal clear water makes you realise your body is brilliant!

5. Even better get someone else to embrace wobbly bits

6. Go exploring, sensibly taking enough water, sun protection and stop for a few beers on the way. Forget the advice and arrive back sweaty, thirsty and hungry. 

7. Go for another naked swim

8. Old people need their rest so let your companion sleep while you are pummelled in a beach facing massage tent by a young man

9. Get dressed for dinner. Decide to play a lazy game of bat and ball instead. 

10. After a substantial dinner it's healthful for the elderly to go for a stroll. Round off a perfect day by heading to the nudist bay and watch the moon rise on a new night. 

A Place called Sunrise

A landmark birthday inevitably leads to introspection and reflection. To be in the geographically same place as last year enables an easier comparison of the mental healing processes. The daily routine should be a comparator but when it has more of the treadmill feeling about it, that's unhelpful and unhealthful. 

I suppose there is a sense of sunshine being conduicive to warming and lifting any sense of depression and lingering grief. However I think everyone knows it doesn't work like that. There are rocks in the soul which enable shade to reside; an impermeable, hopeless darkness. 

It's been either years or days since the death of my dad. Ten years ago on my thirtieth we were all together in the Italian sunshine, without care or thought for what would happen. It hurts deeply that he's not here for this turning decade. It's been a massive time of learning and not of the academic type.  I was once accused of coldness because of my career and university focus but that's just my way of coping. The more buried in study I am, the more I'm hurting.

As I say and write this in a village called 'Sunrise', this passage of time leads to musings and turning over of lifeless mind spaces. Sometimes it turns out sunshine is a cure and though I don't pretend that all is well all of the time, when I compare how I was last year, it is better. 

From where I'm sitting the only way I can describe it, is that the dark rock pools in my mind are slowly being refreshed with the aquamarine clarity of time. And I can live with that. 

A day in the life...

I don't really know the person who I'm on holiday with. I do know about his inability to find supermarkets, innate capacity to find and cause trouble and generally spread chaos. But today he went international. And it was special. It turns out;

1. He can't dress. Seeing him trying to put underpants on whilst hopping around with his size 12 sandals still on his feet was either hysterical or a mind bleach moment;

2.  Clear patio windows pose a real problem. Once I could understand but twice is borderline idiocy. I'm waiting for third time, obviously;

3. However the truly special moment was the realisation that he was splashing merrily around the Adriatic with a wallet full of kunas. Silly kuna that he is. Once we'd let the money dry out we bought some proček - we aren't going to dry out;

4. Slapping himself in the sunburned face because a small bug landed on him, leading to howls of pain;

5. Chocolate flavour shower gel leaked all over his smalls. On the bright side, they are now irresistable to women, if the adverts are correct.

All these, amongst flooding the bathroom, being on permanent speedo watch and tiny crab patrol and eating his own body weight in  gorgeous hotel food leads me to believe we shouldn't do anything dangerous. 

We are planning kayaking, a cross country bike ride, a beach BBQ and a trip to Mostar. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?! 

Gardening part 7

Sometimes gardening, like a hair cut,  can reach that tedious in between stage. It's been a cute and tidy bob but now it's just straggly whilst waiting to be put into a pretty French plait. The hair, that is not the plants. Though the spirally tendrils of the peas look very fringe like. 

This week I'm pleased to announce that the broad beans increasingly have large pods on many of the plants. I dispatched the black fly colony on their stalks hastily so I am still hopeful we can have a bean salad!

In other bean news, the slightly neglected dwarf yellow bean plants have produced the tiniest slimmest protuberances. I'm expecting at least one tuna niçoise salad from those. Not the tuna or potato, obviously. That's probably unrealistic...

The proper lettuces that we transplanted and immediately discounted as DOA seem to have Lazarus-like tendencies and perked up. Not all of them have taken but I wasn't sure what I'd have done with 30 webbs wonderful so that's probably for the best. 

Gardening should come with a mental health warning. I now find myself yelling obscenities at butterflies and frowning at weeds. Where is this going to end?

Gardening part 6

This is rather shockingly the 6th gardening instalment I've written. It's unbelievable for a couple of circular reasons; firstly I haven't killed my plants off yet so I've still got something to write about, and secondly I haven't got bored about writing about the growth upstairs. This week's exciting events include the emergence of hairy pods, a middle class blueberry bush and enough broccoli to scare every school child between Poplar and Hammersmith.

But first the results of an unexpected visitor from the Midlands. My good friend Gill grew up in the country like me and remembers more gardening lore than I ever knew. She was very excited with my balcony flowers and impressed with the stuff grown from seed up on the roof. She warned that my peas would grow much taller so higher sticks would be required at some point. She did laugh at my sad effort at carrots though. Anyway I learnt a few things from her:

1. Carefully selected geranium leaves can be popped in a jar of water and in time they become small plants. The leaf has to be large enough to capture sunlight but not so big that it is too much for the water to keep going.
2. A small sprig of sweet William can be cultivated in the same way. As you can guess, in the greenhouse, I've now got a few jars with leaves and sprigs in them with hopes of a random planting of loud red flowers on the roof.
3. A soft sprig of rosemary was also semi stripped and popped in compost. Apparently this will grow...
4. If I dress (!)  my soil upstairs with compost it will help keep the soil moist and stop the water draining away. I've put this tip to the test tonight with my hardy brassicas and beans. I forked it over a little to. She also threatened to post me some worms...one can't help but imagine the disgust of any bad person wanting to steal anything from my post. That'd learn 'em...

All in all, the stuff on the roof is splendid. I particularly love watering the leathery leaves where the mercury-like droplets gather and wobble in the wind. Today I noticed that the broad bean flowers have produced some lovely little hairy pods so I may get 6 or 7 beans, if I'm lucky. The peas are now graduating from infant to primary school with most of them reaching the second band of string.

With care, I've planted out about 20 broccoli plants - if they all take, heaven knows what I'm going to do with them. Random radishes are still tastily popping up which is nice.

And finally the blueberry bush is enjoying the addition of Sainsbury's finest fair trade coffee grounds, Yorkshire tea leaves and a springing of white wine vinegar on a regular basis (I settled on this out of a choice of that, Sarson's or balsamic). This seems to have stopped, overnight, the wilting and bad leaves...so there you go, acid soil contrary style.

On the downside, the rhubarb isn't good (will also google), the transplanted lettuce has wilted, the carrots are pathetic and one of my geraniums has frilly leaves. Still, I've had enough success to compensate. My onions are developing their second leaves but are still too small to plant out.

Given the sunshine, the roof has become a desirable place for everyone to hang out and people have shown interest in what I'm growing. They probably think I'm some crazy country person but I really hope it inspires them to start thinking about the other raised bed and start planting things. One lady this evening wanted to know how to start - easy: dig over, buy seeds, plant, water repeatedly!

Gardening part 5: Plague, famine, pestilence and peas!

Here is this week's Gardening with Clare. I am pleased to report that the weather is finally co-operating; the joint witchy nose twitching, sacrificial radishes and downright screaming at the elements has been rewarded. The sun has come out and the hurricanes have died away so my poor little plants have been given a fighting chance.

Bloom' luvverly!

That was obviously before I ravished the radishes. They were starting to get a bit big so I unearthed them, had a minor tussle with the wickies that had set up home and chopped the remains into a lettuce salad. So that is one successful crop dispatched. You know, I'm sure it would have been quicker and cheaper to pop to the supermarket...

Anyway the growing stars of the show this week have definitely been the peas and the broccoli seedlings. The peas are now toddling and reaching up their little tendrils to latch on to the nearest...er...other pea plant. So at the weekend, we constructed a tent like structure with strings and sticks to give them a little support. This evening I've been going around asking them nicely to stretch up to reach the structure and assisting the curly bits of vine to cling. V thought I was being cruel but I think they need encouragement. 

The bed of broccoli seedlings are definitely nearing the planting out stage. I've no idea how I'm going to do this but will give it some thought at the weekend. The other brassica are also very strong, although inexplicably, one of the cauliflower plants is almost dead. There doesn't seem to be any recurrence of the leaf mining bugs from last week; too scared to return after I lobbed them off the roof. Other successful seedlings which may eventually be ready to go upstairs are the onions. 

My love of bees is quite well known so it was exciting and gratifying to spot a bumble bee paying an evening visit to the flowering broad bean plants. Nice to know that we are contributing to the local ecology. There are also yellow flowers forming on the dwarf beans so I hope to see bees on them too. I also saw a ladybird on the gooseberry bush but all these friendly visitors are welcome! Unlike the mystery radish munchers.

One thing I still need to so is to check how to make my blueberry bush happier; there is definitely wiltage which is quite sad. However the stalky blackcurrant has taken and is making friends with the rogue lettuce underneath. Even the carrots have discovered the beetroot next door and seem relatively keen to come out to play. Who knows, one of these days we may get a full meal from our roof garden. In the meantime, we'll just stay on our diet...

Gardening part 4: Infestations and irritations

As promised, faithful readers, a weekly gardening update; the fast paced, thrills and spills of garden alarums and excursions brought to you by your intrepid and muddied correspondent. This week has blown by with  force ten gales, ensuring that any radishes not buried deep would be lifted out of the ground and rained down on unsuspecting passers-by many feet below. Still, at least no little creepy crawly plant munchy critters could get up here in this wind?

WRONG!

Before I get on to the murders and planned murders, here is a round up of the progress so far:

• Carrots and beetroot. Despite the rudeness of the flatmate 'is that grass or carrots?' remark, the carrots are coming through finally, with the beetroots happily turning themselves pink with effort. Granted the 'rows' do look like they were sowed by a gardener under the influence of Pimms. Oh

• Broccoli. Really happy with this. A few more weeks and I think I will be planting them out properly in rows. I have a enough for an entire field of them. I don't care, I like the stuff

• Broad beans have got flowers on them and will require better, higher sticks. I will get some bamboo or something tomorrow. Dwarf beans resemble the famous Mr Bunbury and cannot decide whether to live or die. As long as they don't explode, we'll be fine...

• Lettuce - needs eating 

• Radishes. As you can see they are proudly displaying their nice red roots, begging to be put into a salad. See above... As I discovered on Thursday, the greenery is quite prickly and the roots nicely peppery

• Sprouts. Will be done by Christmas, am sure

• Cauliflowers. Will report on these in a mo

• Peas. Alarmingly out of control and being affected by the wind. We need a beach windbreak for the poor little things

• The fruit bushes. I need to check the soil for the blueberry, it really doesn't seem happy, probably because of the lack of acidity in the soil. I haven't researched whether you can just add a bit of vinegar to the watering can as yet

• Rhubarb. I have a small sprout of tiny green. So cute *cries a bit*

• Garlic. Two of the stalks have taken, again wind issues with these

The stuff in the green house is also coming along nicely, with several onions emerging, the lettuce needing more light and the home grown peppers and chillies all doing well.

Imagine my horror when I did my morning drills with the plants and discovered the one accidental shop bought pepper plant covered in aphids! I quickly did a search and found that you could nuke them with chilli sauce and liquid detergent in water. To be fair I did doubt this method as it had a vague whiff of Paracelcian weaponsalve - to cure chilli with chilli. However whatever the alchemy, this solution had the little so-and-sos running for the hills. I then rinsed the plant and waited to see if any more appeared. This morning, there were only a couple and so I repeated the administration of Scary Solution.

Tonight we did our rounds and I discovered more mighty munchers on the cauliflowers. They are obviously some kind of brassica loving leaf miner so I shall have a word with the nice people at Dyas tomorrow when I pick up some sticks. 

The daily visits to the roof has made us appreciate the wonder of the weather around us, tonight we had rainbows and the pinkest clouds I've ever seen. The city looked stunning. What a wonderful way to end a weekend of loveliness.