Does anyone else feel a bit like 2020 is the year that didn't happen? Or find themselves talking about something that happened 'a few months ago', only to realise that, actually, it happened well over a year ago? I feel like everything from February onward has just been sucked into this black hole and been erased from collective memory. It's really throwing off my sense of time, which, let's be honest, has never been that great to begin with.
So much has happened globally - huge society-shaking events - and yet, on a personal level, very little has happened. For me, anyway. I know that makes me very lucky. There are people who have had their whole worlds turned completely upside down, if not outright destroyed, by what has happened in the last nine months. I am one of the lucky ones, and I am so grateful for that. But even knowing how lucky I have been, 2020 has still blurred into one long tunnel of fear and anxiety, and it's a little difficult to see any sign of that ending, even with 2021 on the horizon. Hopefully the vaccine will be a big step in the direction of returning to normal, but I think our lives are going to be permanently changed by this pandemic; I'm not sure things will go back to the way they worked before COVID, however much people may want that. Part of me is very curious to see what changes stick and how society is going to adapt. I'm not here to moan about COVID though. I'm sure you get enough of that from the news, from work, from your family. I'm actually back online after so long away to update you all on some exciting new developments for Sean and me! I really hit the ground running in September: teaching has been so challenging with all the considerations and extra work involved in making schools COVID-safe, and, because I really seem to love choosing the path of most resistance, I also applied for yet another new teaching job. Finally, after a year and a half of rejection and despair, I have found a job in Hertfordshire! It is with a very nice independent school: beautiful grounds, small class sizes, COVID safety measures that actually consider the staff's health and safety as well... I'm very excited to start in January. Yup. January. Nothing happened for so long and then suddenly it all happens very quickly. October was a frantic whirlwind of car-shopping, flat-viewings, and sorting out finances and insurance. I am now the proud owner of a lovely blue hybrid car, which I've only almost crashed once so far, and we have put down a rent deposit on a spacious two-bedroom flat fairly close to both Sean's work and my new school. I am pretty excited to have a bit more breathing room in our home. And a separate kitchen! Such a dream. After the past 6 years, I have learned that open concept kitchen-living-dining is just not my thing. Now that we've sorted the big things, (and thank goodness we have, as now we're back in a country-wide full lockdown, which would make doing that tricky, to say the least) all that remains are the little bits. Sorting out our bills, packing up our stuff, organising a moving van, and recruiting friends and family members to help carry furniture up three flights of stairs. (Any volunteers?) I've got a pile of boxes in my classroom that's slowly multiplying as I raid the school kitchens and site team on delivery days, and I'm gradually copying all my teaching resources from the school's OneDrive to my personal drives. In between normal teaching and day-to-day life admin, of course. The plan is to move to our new flat immediately after the Christmas bank holiday, so I'm not sure how relaxing our December holiday is going to be. Exciting and good fun, I expect, but very busy. Especially since that gives us just under a week to get settled before being back at work. As Sean has pointed out when I was worrying about sorting it all out in time, we don't actually have that much stuff. A week should be plenty of time to get unpacked enough to be comfortable going back to work. Though I've already warned Sean that I will probably be moving things constantly for the first two or three months of 2021 while I try to find a good home for everything. We might actually get a proper break in February, but we'll see. I might decide to paint then. As I said earlier, we have been very lucky this year; for all that 2020 has been a strange, challenging, black hole of a year, there has been plenty of good to come out of it for us. I hope that things are looking up for all of you as well, and that you and your families are healthy, happy, and safe.
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One evening in late January, as we enjoyed our post-pool session drinks in the pub, I allowed the leaders of my kayaking club to convince me that I was confident enough in the swimming pool to join them on the next club trip to Northampton Active, a man-made whitewater course, where they'd be letting some club members get whitewater experience ahead of a weekend away in Wales. I was desperate to get out on moving water after three months of paddling in the pool, and there were no flat-water trips planned any time soon so I jumped at the invitation.
The following pool session, when the coaches found out I was going they were much more sceptical and a little unimpressed that I'd been convinced to join. They weren't worried about me drowning or hurting myself. They were worried that I would get the confidence totally knocked out of me and stop coming to the club. As a teacher, I know exactly what they were thinking; it tends to happen when someone tries to run before they can crawl. Consequently, the trip was modified slightly to include a flat water paddle beforehand on the river Nene, to give the beginners on the trip (aka: me) the chance to practise on moving water before I tried adding very fast moving water and rocks to the equation. As the Saturday approached, I found myself getting nervous. In the pool sessions they had me practising holding an edge (when you're balancing somewhat precariously on the side of your kayak, just shy of tipping yourself over), bracing (to correct yourself if you're about to tip over) and T-rescue (using another person's kayak to turn yourself back over once you've tipped). I was okay with most of it, though I hated waiting underwater for the other kayak to come round and rescue me. I was not yet capable of rolling on my own though, so I had to wait. If I hated it this much now, how much worse would it be with water rushing me toward a rock or the side of the course? The other option was a wet exit, which I really didn't want to do in a river in the middle of winter. The weather continued to be grey, cold, and wet (it was February, after all) and I was just recovering from a nasty cold. So by the time we set off for Northampton, I was definitely feeling less enthusiastic about a being out on a whitewater course. Once we reached Northampton Active though, the weather turned glorious. A bit chilly, but fairly mild. Little wind to speak of, no rain, and plenty of warm, golden sunshine. Layered up in thermals and a borrowed dry suit, I was feeling pretty cosy as I snugged into my kayak and pushed off down the Nene for our flat water paddle. I tried to hang in the background for the first while, because I was having a hard time keeping my kayak under control in the river's current and I didn't want to knock into people. It kept pushing me towards the riverbank, and I was getting tangled up in the weeds. One of the coaches came by to give me some tips, mainly about remembering to use my feet when I paddled, and to reassure me that I was doing well - plenty of people spun in circles their first time out on the river, and I was at least moving in the right direction, if pulling heavily to one side. After a bit, I got the hang of it and was soon pulling ahead and really enjoying the scenery and the beautiful day. It was so peaceful. That hour went by so much faster than I expected; I'd have loved to be out on the river all day.
We were split into groups of three - two students and a coach I'd never met before. When my coach was told that today was my first time out on moving water, there was a very sarcastic 'Oh, thanks!' I don't think he knew I could hear him, but between how tough I'd found controlling my kayak on the flat water, and all the coaches' negative reactions about me being on this trip, I was not at all confident about getting into that water. But there was also no way I was chickening out, not unless someone outright told me I couldn't do it.
We slid into the course in a pretty easy pool at the base of a big drop. We were meant to be practising ferry gliding - when you paddle into a strong current at an angle, holding an. edge, to get across without being pushed off course. It was tough. Really tough. I sort of got it, but not really. I could cut the angle strongly to a point, but then the nose of my kayak got pushed around and I was swept away. I felt like I had very little control over where my kayak was going and couldn't compensate for the fast moving, swirling current. I kept bumping into the others and really struggled to manoeuvre into the right angle and position. I wasn't in any danger of tipping over, but I definitely didn't feel in control.
The other, more experienced members of my group were lovely and very supportive and patient, but I felt like I was really holding them back from enjoying the rest of the course, which was also upsetting and frustrating me. When the coach asked if I was ready to try shooting through some rapids, I agreed, just so the others could get the chance to move on. I probably should have said that I was done and got out, because I in no way felt ready to try shooting rapids and was physically pretty tired, but I was stubborn and proud and refused to give up. I listened to him as he gave advice on how to steer and angle the kayak to get through the three man-made rocks along the next bit: aim for the middle, lean into the turns, and paddle strongly over the drop at the end. Sounded simple enough.
I watched the others go through it, and it didn't look too bad. When it came to the coach, he didn't seem to be moving that fast, and I could see exactly when and how he leaned, edged, and paddled. I could do that. I felt a tiny bit more confident. Mostly because I forgot in that moment how hard it had been all day to point my kayak in the direction I wanted, and the success of everything else hinged on aiming for the middle. I began paddling nervously in the direction of what would be the longest thirty seconds of my life. I aimed for the middle. My kayak went left and I entered the rapids at the wrong angle, thinking, 'This is so much faster than it looks!' I didn't really have the time to think through any leaning or paddling, but I somehow cleared the first two rocks, only panicking a little bit about tipping over and concussing myself on a rock. I didn't lean fast enough into the turn for the third rock. In fact, I don't think I had time to even lean at all before I found myself flung on top of the rock like the I was staging the scene from The Little Mermaid:
Looking decidedly less princessy than Ariel, I kind of sat there for a second, wondering how to get myself out of this mess without also flipping myself upside down in the process. So I shuffled my weight along the smooth plastic 'rock', trying not to damage the borrowed kayak, and threw myself back into the water with a move that probably had more in common with a seal flopping on the beach than a mermaid diving off a rock.
I'm not sure how I managed to stay upright for the next few seconds as I hit the current and was flung all unready over the drop and into the churning water of the next pool. All I remember thinking was 'Shit shit shit!' (if you'll pardon my language) as I shifted my weight in a dozen different ways in seconds so I didn't end up underwater. No thought was spared for paddling strongly over the drop. I think the momentum of launching myself off the rock must have done the trick though, because I landed easily at the bottom and somehow, miraculously, was still in my kayak with my head above water and I was still holding my paddle.
I fist pumped the air a couple times, took my congratulations from the coach, and then quit while I was ahead (if you can count beaching yourself being ahead). That run through those three rocks depleted my confidence level completely. I was not going to be able to handle anything more that day.
It turned out I was on that course for an hour and forty-five minutes. It had felt like forever. And also only fifteen minutes. Apparently I surpassed the coaches' expectations, as they thought I'd be done after about thirty minutes. Yay me.
I finished the day frustrated, exhausted, and pretty upset (not helped by tearing a hole in my borrowed dry suit as I wriggled my exhausted body out of the kayak). My confidence was shot. Kayaking on open water had been so much harder than I had expected it to be. I had thought I'd at least be able to aim my kayak and sort of control where it was going! Despite that, I was not prepared to give up on kayaking altogether because there was also a small part of me that was really proud of the fact that I tried the course, and that I didn't chicken out of running those mini-rapids. But I was definitely looking forward to going back to the pool for a while, where the only thing moving the kayak was me! Tags
I've spent a fair bit of time in the last 12 months filling in applications for various independent schools around southern Hertfordshire and North London. There's always a category on the form that asks, 'What hobbies or interests do you have?' or 'What interests do you pursue outside of teaching?' It sounds harmless enough but, the first time I had to answer them, these questions almost precipitated an existential crisis. Confronted with the patiently ticking text cursor, I froze like a rabbit caught in headlights. What are my hobbies? Outside of work, do I even do anything? I am a teacher. Beyond that, do I even have a distinct identity? Is there actually a person beneath that professional shell?? Is there nothing more to my existence than just work??? Who is Courtney???
Hopefully you can understand the panicked escalation of my inward spiral by the gradually increasing question marks. I desperately typed some vague nonsense into the boxes of that first form, trying to make myself sound like a well-rounded individual rather than some EduTwitter automaton. I think that desperation was rather obvious and, needless to say, I was not successful in that particular application. While the initial panic faded fairly quickly while I got on, as you do, with the business of teaching and living, the questions remained: who am I outside of teaching? What do I actually enjoy doing? How do I want to live my life? I am almost 30 and I felt like I had no personality. Narrowly dodging the oncoming existential crisis that had me quivering like a rabbit, I decided that I should do something about this dearth of interests. I started to make time for the old hobbies I used to really enjoy but never did anymore. Not a lot of time, admittedly, but some. It was a start. My writing was the first thing I went back to, but the thought of my now rather juvenile novel made me cringe; instead, I resuscitated my blog for the second time. I'm not sure how often I can do this before the poor thing has permanent brain damage. I resolved to write for myself again, letting go of the fears and self-consciousness that paralysed me not so long ago. You can read a bit more about that here. I resurrected my inner artist and dusted off my sketchbook. Where to begin? It had been so long, and I've never been good at the creative inspiration where artists can draw or paint something marvellous purely from imagination. I started with watercolours, since Sean had convinced me to buy a set I was admiring in the shop and I was eager to try them out. I painted a tightly furled rose from a photo online. Then I watched countless YouTube time lapse videos of people painting birds, and tried copying a photo of a kingfisher. Then I watched countless more tutorials and how-to videos. In between, I did some pencil sketching too.
Painting and drawing let me slip into peace for a while, where I could shut out the world for a little while and find some calm. It even quiets the voice in my mind that constantly rattles off all the things I need to do and remember at a rapid-fire rate. After a few minutes with my art supplies, there is no voice, it's just the next colour, the next line, the next bit of shading. Step back and assess the whole, then dive into the details again. Repeat. I silence my inner critic, the voice that's always telling me 'it's not perfect, you're not good enough to do this'. I've discovered that when I'm drawing or painting, I can I can let go of mistakes and imperfections and just enjoy the process. It doesn't always work, but it's a wonderful reminder that I am capable of letting go. That I can truly relax.
It also helps me learn to be patient, something I have never been. The best pieces are ones I've worked on for a few hours before walking away, leaving them unfinished. I do something else for a few hours or a few days, and then come back and add a few more details. Erase a bit and try again. This is something I've been forced to do with watercolours, as you often need to wait for layers of paint to dry before you can carry on. I have a sketch and a watercolour chickadee that I'm particularly proud of. I didn't rush to finish either in an evening or afternoon, because I knew it didn't matter if they were finished then or not, or even if they were never finished. There was no deadline. There was no rush.
At about the same time as I first bought the watercolour set, around November of last year, I picked up a completely new hobby: kayaking. After a school trip to a seaside town in Spain, where I joined the students in learning how to surf and kayaking around the bay, I realised how much I missed being out on the water. It reminded me of all those summer days out on the lake in Ontario, fishing, swimming, paddle boarding, just reading on the floating dock. The icy shock of the green water complemented by the hot sun in a blue sky and the pleasant tiredness at the end of the day; the total relaxation that comes from the combination of day-long physical activity and being completely surrounded by nature - literally submerged in it. I had forgotten just how much I really loved being out on the water. I had a similar kind of amazed delight when I swam in the sea for the first time since I was a kid. I wanted to keep doing this. I now live on an island where you are never more than an hour or two from the coast. There is plenty of surfing in England (albeit significantly chillier) and there are probably hundreds of rivers and canals that I often see solo kayakers paddling along in all kinds of weather. When I got back to England, I knew I wanted to keep it up but I had no idea how to go about it. Sean encouraged me to find a club that I could join, where I could borrow equipment and get training as well. A quick Google search led me to a local kayaking club that was so convenient for me in terms of training session times, location, and flexibility that it was like the stars had aligned, as though fate itself was determined for me to continue pursuing this new interest. I'm a confident swimmer and I'm not afraid to be underwater, which meant I took to the significantly more unstable one-person river kayaks fairly well. Pretty soon I was paddling in a (relatively) straight line, cutting an edge, and feeling fairly happy hanging upside down underwater, banging the side of my kayak until someone came to help me flip myself right-side up again. I was keen to get out on the open water again, so even though it was February, when the chance came to join the first outdoor club trip to Northampton I jumped at the chance. Sure, it was a beginner whitewater course, which I was in no way ready for, but there would be a short river paddle first and the club leaders assured me I would be fine, since I seemed so confident in a kayak already! I'm not anywhere near as confident out on moving water. There's a big difference between feeling comfortable underwater in a nice clean swimming pool and being upside down in a murky river with the current pushing you to places you probably don't want to go. I haven't experienced that myself, but just the thought of it made me uncomfortable and I had no desire to 'go swimming' that day, as they call it when you capsize your kayak and have to unhook yourself and swim out because you can't right yourself unaided. This made me a lot more nervous. It didn't help that it was a lot more challenging to keep my kayak going in a straight line when there's actually a current. This particular experience deserves a blog post all on its own, so I'll write more about it later. Suffice it to say for the moment that it was a very difficult day, but that it in no way dampened my enthusiasm for kayaking. Just perhaps my confidence. I've only been back in the pool once since that trip back in February, as in early March the pandemic put my kayaking hobby totally on hold. Pool sessions are suspended indefinitely and, while we're now allowed back out on the rivers and canals in small groups, I have no kit of my own and no way of getting to the meet points. We're still not allowed to carshare and they can't lend out club kit as easily and fully as they did before. So no more kayaking for me for a while. Sean and I passed a man with an inflatable kayak paddling on the canal in Camden two weeks ago and I was filled with longing to be out on the water, so despite my waning confidence towards the end, I am definitely excited to get back in a kayak. I'm not sure if I can fully answer the question of 'Who is Courtney' any better than I could before I began exploring and reviving my hobbies and interests, but I do know that I feel like there's a little bit more to me than just being a teacher now. And really, is there anyone my age (or perhaps any age?) who can definitively answer the question 'Who am I'? And isn't that an answer that changes frequently in our lives anyway? Perhaps I'm getting a little too philosophical for 11pm on a Thursday, so I think I'll just leave it there. Tags
It has been nearly 12 weeks since England went into lockdown. 12 weeks, and I still can't quite figure out what I think or feel about the whole situation. I'm torn. Conflicted. And downright confused. The mental and emotional gymnastics going on internally mean that there have been (many) days where I don't do much more than stare at the wall and aimlessly wander around our tiny flat, picking things up and putting them down, generally ignoring life. It's like my operating system has crashed and someone needs to come and hit ctrl+alt+delete to reboot everything. Courtney is not responding, would you like to restart?
The problem, I think, lies in my inability to reconcile two parts of my mind. Since lockdown began, I have been adapting to working from home, figuring out how to deliver meaningful and engaging remote lessons. I am incredibly grateful because my job is secure. I'm not worried about being let go or even furloughed. In fact, teaching from home has some distinct benefits. It's flexible: I can have a lie in and still make it to my first class in plenty of time. Chores, household bits, and the odd HIIT workout can be done between live lessons, planning and marking. I get to see Sean so much more than I have in the past two years. I am also very grateful that none of my family or friends have been seriously affected by the virus. I don't have children I need to teach and entertain and reassure, or elderly parents that I need to care for on top of working from home. There are lovely wide parks and woodlands very near to my flat, so there are places I can go to exercise and be outside without having to worry about breaking social distancing. There is a lot for me to be very grateful for. I have loads more free, flexible time, all to myself, without any reduction in my salary. I get to spend a lot of quality time with the love of my life, which has reminded me of all the many reasons I do love him and want to spend my life with him. I have all the time I want to spend on my art skills, reading loads of new books, and exercising. The weather has been unseasonably wonderful, making it feel like summer is already here. There is a small part of me that does kind of feel like I'm just on holiday. So what's my problem? Why have there been long days and even weeks where I can barely motivate myself to get out of bed, let alone exercise or write or dredge up the will to do the dishes? That's where the second part of my mind comes in, colliding with this carefree, counting-my-blessings approach to lockdown. The part that flinches whenever someone doesn't bother to move over or switch to single-file on the pavement, to allow as much distance as possible between us. The part that gets disproportionately angry over groups of mixed households having parties and BBQs at the park. It's the slightly sick feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I think, 'I'll just nip to Sainsbury's while I'm on lunch to pick up a few things for the week', only to stand in a queue for half an hour before wandering the picked-over shelves and realising there's no bread, milk, or eggs, watched over by pleasant staff in blue plastic gloves and masks. I pass shuttered stores and boarded-up restaurants and wander down the high street, eerily deserted except for the block-long queues of grim figures with their faces poorly covered, snaking outside banks and the post-office. There's a quiet, furtive pressure that builds with every moment where I come up against the jagged edges of the 'new normal'. When these two realities come up against each other, I can't seem to reconcile them and it throws me into a state of restless idleness where I can't seem to start anything. When I do, completing even one task takes Herculean effort and I am exhausted by the end of it. I just....can't be bothered. It takes considerable mental and emotional effort to maintain the grateful positivity I mentioned earlier. So when I crash, that dissipates pretty quickly. It becomes much harder to ignore the fact that our home is a small two-room open-plan flat. Sean is effectively trapped in the bedroom for large portions of the day, working in the least ergonomic way possible, as I'm required to deliver live lessons and tutorials and have thrice-weekly live meetings. His back, neck, and hamstrings are a knotted mess at this point from trying to work for hours practically lying down. My neck and shoulders aren't much better; laptops are not designed to be used like a desktop, and none of the chairs we have are quite the right height for the tiny desk I'm working at. The full afternoon sun through our living room windows turns our flat into a greenhouse. It wouldn't be terrible if we could open our windows, but the neighbours below us and the neighbours below them smoke weed and seem to tag-team each other from about 9 in the morning, making open windows and doors unpleasant, to say the least. We've spoken to them three times so far, with little effect (though in true Brit fashion they were very apologetic and polite when we knocked on their door). I half hoped they would eventually run out and we could have a break but they clearly stockpiled well before lockdown began. So our choices are unbearably hot and stuffy, or constant sneezing as the haze of skunk sets off my allergies. The heat also makes it hard to sleep at night. We open our bedroom window (which doesn't seem to catch the scent as much) but that angles toward the main road. Every time a truck or ambulance or police car goes by, it startles me awake. A police station is about 500m up the road from us, so sirens are fairly common, and being one of the main roads running through the centre of town and leading to the M25, trucks and general traffic are relatively frequent even after midnight. Sean doesn't sleep well with the heat and my restlessness either, so we both start the next day of lockdown with frayed tempers. I could give the saltiest sailor a run for his money cursing at little things when I'm short-tempered - my mouse and keyboard that don't work properly, a webpage that takes too long to load, my own clumsiness, our neighbour's constant recreational drug use - and this puts Sean on edge, which winds me up, which makes him even more edgy....you can see the vicious cycle beginning here. While we don't argue much and are both making every effort to be patient and kind and loving to each other, there are days when it's very hard not to have our own spaces to retreat to. The government has eased lockdown enough to allow people to drive around a bit, though only to visit parks and other areas where they could still socially distance. We don't own a car though, so we still can't go anywhere. Friends are posting on social media the places they are visiting and it fills me with envy and sadness because we can't go anywhere, not even to visit Sean's family on the other side of London. We are restless in our flat and bored of the park near our home. You can now sit in a friend's garden and catch up, as long as you stay 2 metres apart and there aren't more than 6 of you. I am lucky that I have a friend who lives within walking distance. It was wonderful and a genuine balm to see Anneka and share her homemade elderflower bubbly in the garden, though there were awkward, uncomfortable moments where we had to try and keep our distance in the narrow corridor and kitchen inside her house, on the way to and from the garden. Sean's closest friends live either in or on the other side of London, so a quick visit is not really something we can do and maintain social distancing, given the need for trains and tube journeys. While we are trying to be responsible and do what we can to help limit the spread, we are both practically climbing the walls waiting for the government to ease lockdown enough for us to go somewhere and do something and see people. We both return to work in some small capacity next week and we're both actually looking forward to it. It's a change. An action of sorts. It feels like suddenly things are moving forward again, rather than stagnating in this holding pattern. The lockdown was (and is) necessary. I know that, and we have followed government advice in all matters and have no intention of ignoring any rules currently in place. I know that in many ways I am very lucky and have a lot to be grateful for. None of these facts mean that the past 12 weeks have been easy. I would not, and could not, make it through this incredibly challenging time without Sean at my side. So I suppose, of everything that I am grateful for in my life right now, I think I am probably most grateful for his loving, steadying, comforting company. Tags
When Sean and I moved in together, I was determined to find a place we could afford that also had some kind of outdoor space; I was lucky enough to find a flat with a nice-size balcony. There's enough room for a bistro table and chair and for me to stretch out on a beanbag and cushions if I want, but it was a pretty lacklustre space so I didn't spend as much time out there as I thought I would. The planks that make up the floor are uncomfortable to stand on, never mind lie on, and the bistro chair is not exactly comfortable, even with a couple cushions. The balcony also has a rather grim view of the communal bins for our apartment building. Apart from planting a few geraniums and fuchsias in a railing box, I hadn't really done much with it since we moved in. My minimal effort was partly because I was hoping we might be moving to Hertfordshire this summer and partly because we wanted to go away more this summer and I wouldn't be around to water as much as I needed.
Moving this year is looking extremely unlikely now, and any travel has been cancelled since the country will still be in some state of lockdown for the foreseeable future, so between that and how much more time I'm spending in this flat, I decided it was time to do something about the balcony and make it a space I actually wanted to spend my time. This was a tricky project because, of course, I decided to start right around the beginning of COVID lockdown. Nurseries were closed. Most shops were closed, and I didn't have a car to get to the bigger grocery stores that might also sell soil, planters and plants in their seasonal aisles. How on earth was I going to make this work? Nurseries would deliver, but the delivery fee was steep and there was a very limited returns policy and almost no guarantee on the condition of the plants when they arrived at your door. Grocery stores would not deliver plants as part of their grocery delivery service. I didn't trust Amazon enough to order plants, and the cost of plain plastic planters there is stupidly inflated. I did have some success though, finding a really inexpensive outdoor rug and I even managed to get a gravity sun lounger for half-off. At least I would be more comfortable out there now. The next win was when I found the online subscription florist/nursery Lazy Flora. Highly reviewed and with a guarantee on their plants, I figured it was worth a go. They also claimed to be cheaper than most nurseries and, after all the pricing and shopping around I did, I can verify that this is true. Especially with delivery factored in. I signed up for their outdoor subscription box, mainly because I did't realise you could also order a one-off box. Their customer service is really friendly and personable and very prompt with replies to any questions, something that surprised me given how much everything has slowed down with the COVID lockdown. It did take a while for the order to ship, partly I think because I went the subscription route, but once it was dispatched it was delivered the next day. The plants were beautiful, and pulling everything out and opening the containers felt like unwrapping a gift! They were all carefully packaged to protect them from any damage in transit, and came with a guide explaining what each plant was, how to transplant them, and how much water and sunlight they needed. It also came with a pair of disposable gloves (though they have since stopped providing those out of respect for the shortage in supplies the NHS was/is facing).
I had managed to find reasonably priced planters online from a company called Plastic Box Shop. They had holes for drainage that just needed to be punched through with a drill. I do not have a drill, so I made do with a hammer, nails, and a screwdriver à la Mark Watney in The Martian. The planters arrived a couple days before the Lazy Flora delivery, so as soon as my plants arrived I spent the afternoon potting and arranging. I had ordered compost with my plants, though let me tell you, that 10kg bag they send does not go far enough! I suppose if you were putting as many as possible into one planter it might have stretched far enough, but that was not my plan. Some of the plants (namely the peony and primrose) had to stay in their travel pots until I could buy some more compost, which I eventually did through Amazon. They survived well enough, the peony even growing a good five inches taller and sprouting leaves over the five days I had to wait for the compost to arrive. The ones I had planted flourished, blooming rapidly in the unseasonably hot and sunny April weather.
I highly recommend Lazy Flora. While you can't choose your selection of plants for the subscription boxes, they send you a really lovely range of seasonal plants that are healthy and relatively low maintenance. If that bothers you, you can choose to buy single plants from their indoor plant boutique as well. Unfortunately they don't have an equivalent for outdoor plants. They do have a variety of subscription boxes: indoor, outdoor, pet-friendly, and even a herb and vegetable box, all of which you can also order as a one-off (in case getting a box of 8 plants every month or so would completely overwhelm your tiny balcony). The only thing that I struggled with a little was figuring out how to cancel the subscription. It's easy enough to manage in terms of skipping months (or even skipping a whole year, if you wanted to keep it for next season) but you can't cancel it on your own. I had to email customer service and ask them to do it for me. They were really prompt and friendly though, so it was still easy and pleasant enough - just not what I'm used to with other subscription services.
To round things off, I also picked up a few bulb packets from Marks and Spencer, along with a hanging sweatpea basket, so my balcony is looking very green at the moment (though also a bit bedraggled after the howling gale we've had all weekend. Croydon is possibly the windiest city I've ever lived in). Now that I have a sun lounger and an umbrella, Sean can often find me out here with my nose buried in a book (or napping). I don't even notice the rubbish bins anymore and thoroughly enjoy watching everything sprout and bloom. And as you can see, my Lazy Flora plants are absolutely flourishing. TAGS |
Hello There!I'm Courtney, an English teacher with a healthy dose of wanderlust. South African-born and Canadian-raised, I'm currently living and working in London, England. Follow me
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