Janet Daniels Open Garden

We had a lovely weekend on Sat 29th and Sun 30th May 2010. We went to visit our neighbour, Janet Daniels, 'Open Garden and Plant Sale'. Janet has a truly beautiful garden, which is also featured in 'London Gardens 2010', the guide for the National Gardens Scheme (gardens open for charity) - see www.ngs.org.uk.





'London Gardens' includes information about beautiful gardens that are open to the public in London. Visitors are asked to donate money for charity; rather than there being a fixed entrance fee. Janet's garden is open to the public a couple of times a year. It will be open again on 24th and 25th July 2010.



Janet's garden has also been featured on BBC, ITV, BBC Radio and in the local press. She is described in the guide as being a 'plantaholic' and it continues, saying that her garden is:



"...behind terraced house, with every planting opportunity maximised through a colourful abundance of baskets, climbers, shrubs and fruit trees...exuberant mixed borders..."



We saw the advertisement for the Open Garden in our local newsagent, and the leader of the local choir, 'Forest Voices' that I am, Jenny Beeching, also informed us about it. Then, on the Saturday our neighbour knocked on our door, telling us that she had just visited the garden and that it was truly beautiful. She thought that we would really love it and that we should go and have a look for ourselves. This neighbour came to our Summer Party last year, with the grand opening of our pond! So she knows about our own quiet enthusiasm for all of this (but it is absolutely nothing compared to Janet's enthusiasm of course).





So, anyway, on the Saturday, Glenn, Alexander and I went along to visit the garden, although unfortunately it was raining. Then, on the Sunday, I went again, with my neighbour, Pauline - and the weather then was beautiful; really sunny. So, very lucky there.





We had a lovely conversation both with Janet and her daughter, Kirsty. By strange coincidence, we discovered that Kirsty lives in our road and that her son has been cleaning our car! Anyway, Janet told us that she sometimes gardens for 10 hours a day - that's shows just how enthusiastic he is. Pauline and I were amazed! I like a little gardening but could never do anything like that. I would find it far too exhausting apart from anything else. Still, Glenn, Alexander and I do good teamwork with it all. Glenn likes the intricacies of gardening; I like doing the general maintenance such as cutting the lawn and Alex is very good at looking after the pond. So, we get there. But that's 3 of us doing a small garden! Whereas Janet does tons of work in a big garden - a lot of it on her own. Amazing!



What else can I say about Janet's garden? Well, there are an incredible variety of plants and flowers in it; all different shapes and colours. It is truly spectacular and I have never seen anything like it. And every time I asked Janet the name of a plant, she knew it straightaway! There are also three ponds, including a koi carp pond and a wildlife pond. Some of the fish in the pond are really big. There are different sculptures and ornaments; an iron-wrought swing; enclosed seating areas; a lawn area; a secret garden which one can walk right round; arches; enclosed seating areas and an artistic shed with shelves. It is truly incredible!



Janet informed us that she took on an extra piece of land at the back of her garden 9 years ago; and so this has made the garden even bigger and more spectacular. We also saw a picture of Janet's husband digging the garden, when it was all just concrete and looking very sparse - many, many years ago, of course. Now, Janet can buy whatever plants she likes, and does not have to watch her pennies any more. To our utter astonishment, she also has no less than 3 allotments.



Tea and cakes were also for sale, which was also very enjoyable (all proceeds to charity).


The London gardens raised 141,000 in 2009 for charity altogether. All the proceeds from Janet's Open Garden days went to Asha Trust, supporting community projects in Sri Lanka.





So, gradually I am getting more and more into my local community, which has been very much my aim over the last couple of months or so, so that's all great. What I have discovered that I particularly like doing is Salsa dancing. They actually run free Salsa dancing classes in my local area, which is really something, especially as I enjoy it so much. I like the fast pace of it all. I now go to these classes with another neighbour in my road. By strange coincidence, I have also just discovered that Salsa dancing is a Cuban dance!


Anyway, I just had to take some photos of Janet's garden - it was just so very, very beautiful - so here they are below. As you can see, lots of people went to visit her garden. And it was taking these photos that prompted me to write this blog!

Janet in her garden

'Second Chance' by Janet Green

I picked this book up at a 'Book Swap' party and it proved to be a very enjoyable and entertaining read. The book is 'Second Chance' by Janet Green, Penguin, 2008.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Chance-Jane-Green/dp/014102173X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1274435964&sr=8-1-fkmr0

Also, there were a couple of coincidences. Firstly, the title ' Second Chance' bears the same name to a choir that I joined for a while, in Blackheath, Kent. Secondly, the book is set around school friends, of some 20 years ago, reuniting. I also had a reunion with some of my school friends a year or so ago!

The book explores these different school friends; what they had been doing with their lives; the experiences they had gone through; their jobs, careers, relationships etc.

It then looks at how they are coping with their current situations. Tom, for example, sadly dies, and they all had to cope with that/deal with that, as best they could. Holly does it by falling for his brother, Will (who reminded her of Tom). In the process of all this she leaves her husband Marcus, and then realises that actually Will isn't the one for her either! But it as a learning experience. She realises that her marriage was a big mistake, and now she has the time to think about what it would be best to do next.

Meanwhile, Paul and Anna are trying to have a baby but nothing is working. Whilst Olivia gets pregnant, but doesn't want the baby. Paul and Anna suggest that they adopt her baby; they said they would really like that. But in the end, Olivia has the baby and bonds with it. Saffron, the actress wants to make it big, but is finding it difficult to make the breakthrough. So, she turns to alcohol instead, and then has a bit of a fling with Marcus. That is the final straw for Holly, in regard to her marriage. Then, Saffron's relationship with the famous Pearce is cemented and the book ends with Pearce saying that he has been graced with a 'second chance'.

'Cosmopolitan' had this to say about the book (which I agree with):

"Will keep you entertained to the last page'

The author, Janet Green, is a former journalist of the Daily Express who gave up her job to write a real woman's story about being single in the city. This became her first novel, Straight Talking, and she has written several other novels since then. She has four children and lives in Connecticut. So the author has rather an interesting background as well, I thought. I am sure that many novelists turn real life situations into fiction. Douglas Kennedy remarked on the fact, for example, that he got much of the material for his novels from that messy thing called 'Life'!

'The September Girls' by Maureen Lee

This was another enjoyable read - another Maureen Lee story that is set in Liverpool. In a stormy September night in 1920, two women from very different backgrounds (one very well-off and one very poor) give birth to two daughters - Cara and Sybil. 19 years later, Cara and Sybil come together when they both enlist and are stationed in Malta. The story, woven around these characters, is full of intrigues, twists and turns, love affairs, secrets, death, heartache and much else besides. It gives one a powerful sense of history and the great difficulties that people went through in war time periods.

'Taming the Beast' by Emily Maguire

I thought this book was going to simply and clearly explore the topic of teachers taking sexual advantage of children, and how this can affect children/young teenagers later in life. So it interested me. However, I was disappointed. Don't get me wrong, it did address these issues, but in a way that I really found very distasteful. After rampant sex and declarations of love, Mr Carr, the English teacher, goes abroad with his wife, and abandons the 14 year old school girl, Sarah Clark. Sarah was a very intelligent girl and they had lots of discussions about English literature together. This bit of the book was good, and there even some interesting quotes in it from English Literature But this was no way to treat a young, vulnerable girl, even though she claimed that she knew what she was doing. When he leaves her she becomes a nymphomaniac, having sex with anyone and everyone; she becomes completely obsessed by it all. She also smokes pot, and lives a hedonistic life in general (although does also continue with her studying). Finally, he returns having divorced his wife, and they get together again. But their love is always on the verge of destroying them, especially when the abusing, violent side starts to take a hold, and they draw blood from each other. There are some very positive reviews of the book on amazon, and on the front cover there is a quote from Matt Thorne, of the Independent saying that it was 'The best novel I've read all year.' It is well-written, it has to be said, and it kept me engaged to the end, but I also thought it really was a very sickening book and I wasn't sure whether I really wanted to continue reading it (even though I did). It is not a book I would recommend, but I decided to blog it - don't always have to be writing good reviews!

'Laceys of Liverpool' by Maureen Lee

This was an enjoyable read. It centred around 2 sister-in-laws - Alice Lacey and Cora Lacey. They both give birth to sons, on a chaotic night in the height of the war, in Liverpool in 1940. Alice was married to John Lacey and Cora was married to Billy Lacey. Alice's son was called Cormac and Cora's was called Maurice.

But for some reason, Cora was always jealous of Alice; Alice had indeed lived a better, more honourable life than Cora. But Cora seemed to have her hang-ups. Cora wanted John rather than Billy, and thought she'd got lumbered with second best. But then John is seriously disfigured in the war; he felt ashamed and did not see how Alice could ever still be attracted to him, with his face looking like that. She tried and tried to convince him otherwise, telling him that she still loved him, but he wouldn't/couldn't believe her. He became very jealous and possessive. She reacted by wanting to manage a hairdressers. Cora lent her some money to help her, but Alice did not realise when she signed the agreement (she was very uneducated and not very literate) that this would mean that Cora would have a share of the profits for ever more. Cora had deceived her.

Meanwhile, John ends up going off with a one-time, prostitute called Clare who had a harelip -he somehow thought they would be well-matched. She ended up having his children, and he lived a double-life. When Alice finally found out she was obviously devastated, and John moved out permanently. John then encouraged Clare to have an operation; she looked so much better after that, but then he became insecure and jealous, just as he had done with Alice. The whole thing was beginning to seem impossible. In the end, Clare walks out on him. She didn't want him doing the same thing to her that he did to Alice.

He goes back to Alice, but she won't have him. He goes to see Cora; she is delighted. She thought that she had finally hooked him; they have sex (although he was too drunk to know what he was doing). He is very down; he accidentally sets fire to the house, and dies. Cora is devastated; having finally got him, so she thought and then lost him in such a short space of time. She also at the same time confided in him that she had, kind of, murdered two of her aunts.

Cora is later in trouble and Alice offers her a cleaning job in one of her 3 hairdressing salons -yes, the business thrived and grew. Alice is always trying to do right by Cora, even though Cora always seems to want to do harm to Alice.

Alice has 4 children; in the end, the 4 children are fed-up with Cora's antics, and manage to find a way to stop Alice from having to pay all this money to Cora. One of Alice's children manage to get hold of the agreement, and tear it up in front of Cora's face.

As for Cormac and Maurice, Cormac is becoming very successful - wins scholarships and studies at Cambridge. Meanwhile, Maurice, tragically, on the other hand, ends up in prison. His mother used to beat him with a cane, and then love and cuddle him - he grew up very confused.

Cora seeing Cormac doing so well, is jealous once again. She tells him that she swapped the babies at birth, and that Cormac is actually her son, and Maurice is Alice's. Cormac is devastated. He doesn't want Cora to be his mother; he doesn't want it at all. He loves Alice, but can no longer call her 'mum'. He drops out of university; forms a music group and is on the road, making music and smoking pot etc. Then, it later seems that Cora was lying about this all along anyway.

Meanwhile, Cormac comes home after a while, with a pregnant girl. Maurice falls in love with her, and takes her from Cormac. Cormac doesn't mind; he thinks that's fair enough, as he got the better woman to bring him up. He eventually marries someone else.

Alice's children have children; the Lacey family grows. Towards the end of the book, 4 members of the family are pregnant. And in the closing pages, both Alice and Cora find some peace. Cora seems to realise that she has not treated Alice right over the years (as opposed to thinking that she was always the one that was hard done by, that kept coming out worse off), and Neil, the man that Alice loved after it went wrong with John, returns.

'Going Dutch' by Katie Fforde

'Going Dutch' by Katie Fforde proved to be quite an interesting read, although I did not enjoy it as much as other books of Katie Fforde that I have read recently. This novel is set around life on a barge. When Jo Edwards husband trades her in for a younger model, she decides to go and live on a barge. Meanwhile, Dora Hamilton decides that she cannot go through with her wedding (to her childhoold sweetheart). So she takes up the offer and suggestion of her friend Kate and goes to live on the Three Sisters barge with Jo (Kate's mother). They then find they go travelling around on the barge quite a lot (which was not something that they had originally intended to do) and get to know various people. At one point, a man goes overboard, for example, and has to be rescued. The novel spends some time exploring all this barge life, so the book will particularly appeal to those that are thinking of starting up a barge life, I think. Then, two men come to feature in their lives - Marcus for Jo and Tom for Dora.

'Wedding Season' by Katie Fforde

This was an enjoyable read. So, looks like I've found another author that I really like - Katie Fforde. The story is around the theme of wedding planning - not traditionally my area, but anyway... Sarah Stratford is a wedding planner - and a very competent one at that. That's how she earns her living. But she suddenly finds herself having to organise 2 weddings on the same day - her sister Lily's (who is also pregnant) and the famous Carrie Candy's. She can't possibly turn either of them down. And so the fun begins. Sarah is helped by Elsa, an accomplised dress designer and Bron, an excellent hairdresser. And then they have their own relationships going on in the background as well. Sarah finally gets together with Hugo, the photographer, who she had the hots for from the very beginning. And the two weddings go off successfully. A very cheerful read.