Aussie rules: an old Melbourne bookshop transformed into a modern family home

A designer has breathed new life into a narrow building that was once the city’s first feminist book store

When Kate Challis’s husband was a student in Melbourne in the 1990s, he bought a copy of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale from the city’s first feminist book store. On a busy street in the then-gritty district of Fitzroy, Shrew women’s bookshop was one of the few places in the city that sold Atwood’s work. Today, that same narrow shop, former centre of feminist and LGBTQ radicalism, is home to Challis, a designer with a PhD in art history, her husband, and their 11-year-old son. It is one of a row of 16 original shops that were built in 1892, of which four remain.

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How to grow blueberries | Alys Fowler

To enjoy a summer crop, the trick is in the soil, which should be acidic, porous and damp

I cannot say that I am exactly rich in blueberries; my harvest is modest, but for three or four weeks I can pick handfuls to scatter over my breakfast cornflakes. It never occurs to me to want blueberries, or cornflakes for that matter, outside of this brief summer fling, but for those glorious mornings my pleasure is sated.

Blueberries are acid fans and that makes them tricky to please, because they want garden soil with a pH between 4.5-5.5; most sit somewhere around 6.5-7.5. And therein lies the problem. Blueberries in the wrong pH sulk and can turn chlorotic: the leaves go sickly pale green; the plant becomes stunted; yields disappear.

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Gardening tips: plant wallflowers for a vivid display

Then invest in a collapsible cloche to keep pests off your veg and add compost to raised beds and pots

Plant this Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’ is a pretty purple wallflower that you can plant for a spring display, and enjoy the blooms until midsummer. It needs full sun: take cuttings from sideshoots in summer as this is a shortlived perennial. Height and spread: 75cm x 60cm.

Buy this If pigeons and other pests obliterated your vegetables last year, coordinate the fightback now: the brolly cloche opens like an umbrella and pegs into place to keep your kale hole-free: £24.99 from the Organic Gardening Catalogue.

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How to grow blueberries | Alys Fowler

To enjoy a summer crop, the trick is in the soil, which should be acidic, porous and damp

I cannot say that I am exactly rich in blueberries; my harvest is modest, but for three or four weeks I can pick handfuls to scatter over my breakfast cornflakes. It never occurs to me to want blueberries, or cornflakes for that matter, outside of this brief summer fling, but for those glorious mornings my pleasure is sated.

Blueberries are acid fans and that makes them tricky to please, because they want garden soil with a pH between 4.5-5.5; most sit somewhere around 6.5-7.5. And therein lies the problem. Blueberries in the wrong pH sulk and can turn chlorotic: the leaves go sickly pale green; the plant becomes stunted; yields disappear.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Wy5A1F
via IFTTT

Gardening tips: plant wallflowers for a vivid display

Then invest in a collapsible cloche to keep pests off your veg and add compost to raised beds and pots

Plant this Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’ is a pretty purple wallflower that you can plant for a spring display, and enjoy the blooms until midsummer. It needs full sun: take cuttings from sideshoots in summer as this is a shortlived perennial. Height and spread: 75cm x 60cm.

Buy this If pigeons and other pests obliterated your vegetables last year, coordinate the fightback now: the brolly cloche opens like an umbrella and pegs into place to keep your kale hole-free: £24.99 from the Organic Gardening Catalogue.

Continue reading...

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Aussie rules: an old Melbourne bookshop transformed into a modern family home

A designer has breathed new life into a narrow building that was once the city’s first feminist book store

When Kate Challis’s husband was a student in Melbourne in the 1990s, he bought a copy of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale from the city’s first feminist book store. On a busy street in the then-gritty district of Fitzroy, Shrew women’s bookshop was one of the few places in the city that sold Atwood’s work. Today, that same narrow shop, former centre of feminist and LGBTQ radicalism, is home to Challis, a designer with a PhD in art history, her husband, and their 11-year-old son. It is one of a row of 16 original shops that were built in 1892, of which four remain.

Continue reading...

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Let’s move to Eltham, south-east London: it gave birth to Kate Bush and Bob Hope

On the surface, it’s your average London sprawl of 1930s semis, but it hides its treasures

What’s going for it? It’s true, you do have to suspend a jot of disbelief imagining a young Henry VIII jousting in the tilt yard while you queue for socks at the tills in M&S. But that’s Eltham for you. Like many suburbs, it hides its treasures, its oddities. On the surface, it’s your average London sprawl of 1930s semis, Carphone Warehouse and McDonald’s. But this sprawl gave birth to Kate Bush (Kate Bush!), to Bob Hope (actual Bob Hope!), schooled a young Frankie Howerd and was nursery to Henry VIII. Not a bad little nursery: Eltham Palace, tucked out of view, is these days mostly the product of the Courtauld family, who built their dreamy art deco grand design, down to (recently returned) gold phones and quarters for their pet lemur, Jongy, amid the ruins of Henry’s childhood home. But ever since Thomas More introduced young Henry to the greatest mind in Europe, Erasmus, a few hundred metres from where today stands Dylan Barbers “sunbed/tanning” and Coco’s Espresso Bar, Eltham, high on its hill, has considered itself a cut above the likes of Sidcup.

The case against Two mammoth roads, the A2 and A20, roar through, dividing up the manor and fumigating the place.

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