The Week in My Patch

I’ve been thinking about doing a Substack for ages, and in the end it feels best to begin exactly where I am: in the garden, muddy, hopeful, and trying to break the back of an increasingly ambitious patch.

We spent most of the weekend planting hydrangeas, which always feel wonderfully optimistic—like making promises to your future self. We did a pilgrimage to Neal’s Nursery near Wandsworth, which we absolutely love, and I also placed a slightly overexcited order with Farmer Gracy for bulbs and various other botanical hopefuls.

I’ve also become irrationally invested in wildflower seeds. The RHS does these wonderful cottage garden mixes, and I’ve been flinging them around with great abandon, fully imagining that by midsummer I shall be sprinting through my own private meadow like some hybrid of Florence Welch and Kate Bush.

Reality may, of course, offer three lonely cornflowers and a weed problem.

Still.

Chelsea Flower Show traffic has already begun, which means the King’s Road is entering its annual state of horticultural hysteria, so I suspect I may remain happily in my own patch this week.

Breakfast intelligence

We still haven’t opened the Fortnum’s marmalade we bought recently—the Dalemain Festival winner, no less—which feels like absurd restraint on our part.

Fortnum &Mason Dalemain Marmalade: https://go.shopmy.us/p-59101990

Instead, we’ve reverted to Rose’s lemon and lime marmalade, newly discovered by David, who now behaves as though he personally unearthed it.

Rose’s Lemon & Lime Marmalade: https://go.shopmy.us/p-59102364

I do love how passionately people can feel about preserves.

Excavations

We’ve also been in our storage unit—which feels less like organising and more like amateur archaeology.

What to bring home? What to sell? What to throw away?

I’m increasingly tempted by a car boot sale, partly for decluttering purposes and partly because I suspect the content potential is enormous.

One thing under brief consideration: my old Swatch collection.

I used to collect them rather enthusiastically, and there is, somewhere in storage, what feels like an entire trunk full of the things.

Naturally, when I floated the idea of selling them, everyone was magnificently dismissive.

“You’ll never get any money for those.”

And then—of course—this weekend happened.

Swatch launched its collaboration with Audemars Piguet, which promptly became global hysteria. Sold out instantly. People apparently fighting each other in queues. The usual deeply civilised luxury-watch behaviour.

And yes, I could have gone to Battersea and attempted to get one.

I did fleetingly think about it.

Reader, I did not.

Now I am left contemplating both what might have been and whether I’ve wildly underestimated my own archive of cheerful plastic horology.

So for now, the Swatches remain.

I’ll report back if I become either a watch magnate or a car boot casualty.

Cultural outing

We went to Photo London this weekend, which was brilliant.

Such an extraordinary range—serious collectors buying David Bailey prints at £15,000 a go, newer accessible works for those dipping a toe into collecting…

…and me leaving with a tea towel.

Admittedly, it’s a very chic tea towel from the Lee Miller archive, featuring her wonderful quote:

“I’d rather take a picture than be one.”

Honestly, that may be the best thing I saw all day.

Lee Miller’s Rolleiflex Camera Tea Towel: https://go.shopmy.us/p-59102653

It also delighted David, who still owns and loves his Rolleiflex—the sort of gloriously analogue camera you bend over and peer into from above, which feels impossibly romantic now.

Watching

We saw the Billie Eilish film.

David has developed a completely wholesome crush on Billie, whom he considers one of the great lyrical talents of her generation.

He is quite sincere about this.

I rather love that.

Things I’m lusting after

I’ve been eyeing swimwear from Eres, which I adore, though the prices are genuinely eye-watering.

ERES Larcin Triangle One-Piece: https://go.shopmy.us/p-59102937

Still, I increasingly subscribe to the theory that one fabulous swimsuit may be preferable to four mediocre ones.

That said, Marks & Spencer rather surprised me this week. I went with my stepdaughter Krishna to the Pantheon branch and they had some genuinely excellent things.

Krishna bought; I showed remarkable restraint.

I’ve also found the sweetest handbag charms and keyrings from Juno & Pip—beaded, personalised, lovely colour palettes, very giftable, and mercifully not ruinously expensive.

JUNO & PIP Honey and Bloom: https://go.shopmy.us/p-59105593

Exactly the sort of thing one orders for someone else and then mysteriously keeps.

Coming up

We’ve got friends visiting from overseas this weekend, which means I urgently need to book somewhere fun for dinner.

I haven’t booked a thing yet, naturally.

So no doubt there will be a last-minute scramble, a new discovery, and something amusing to report back on.

For now, I’m staying put, tending my hydrangeas, hoarding my Swatches, and waiting for either the wildflowers or inspiration to bloom first.