Stuck at home, I can’t stop fantasising about moving house

Nothing makes me dream of my new place more than being trapped in my old one

Confession: I’m a member of the community of property website Rightmove, er, enthusiasts. It would be nice to find a kink-positive name for us cornicing-botherers and square-footage fetishists (Belgians call property obsession being born with a “brick in the stomach”), but I accept it’s a sordid little vice, on a par with reading the Daily Mail sidebar on women having secondary sexual characteristics while wearing clothes.

Fantasies of home are especially potent at the moment, because nothing clarifies your thoughts and dreams about home as much as the long, dull reality of being stuck there. Even though no one and nothing is moving at the moment, property fantasies are especially potent, because nothing clarifies your thoughts and dreams about home as much as the long, dull reality of being stuck there.

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Fresh ways to keep mint in tiptop condition

Mint is a vigorous grower so it needs plenty of space – and don’t worry if you kill it, all good gardeners have at some point

“I have even killed mint!” is a line I see at least once a week from gardening newbies. It’s a feat that is often thought of as the hallmark of a truly terrible horticulturist. Yet, as someone who has been obsessively gardening all my life, I don’t understand where this idea comes from. Far from being invincible in the hands of anyone but the most awful gardeners, mint is something I have killed over and over again, in a variety of different ways. Just enough times, in fact, to finally learn how to grow it well. Here is my advice, not only on how to successfully grow mint but, more importantly, how to give yourself a break.

Mint probably gets its reputation for being hard to kill because it has a high metabolism, which means it is a very vigorous grower. Quickly spreading to colonise large areas of ground through its subterranean runners, it will often swamp neighbouring plants as it expands outward. However, like many superhero powers, this lightning-fast metabolism is as much a curse as it is a gift. If confined to a pot, as is often the case when in the hands of first-timers starting out with gardening, mint will soon exhaust the space, filling the pot with trapped runners that spiral round the container, strangling its own growth and depleting the available nutrients. This is particularly the case in containers made of porous materials, such as terracotta, which can contribute to severe drought stress. Mint is particularly susceptible to this. Without new territory to conquer, plants quickly run out of steam. This makes them susceptible to rust, a common and untreatable fungal disease that can decimate this genus.

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Stuck at home, I can’t stop fantasising about moving house

Nothing makes me dream of my new place more than being trapped in my old one

Confession: I’m a member of the community of property website Rightmove, er, enthusiasts. It would be nice to find a kink-positive name for us cornicing-botherers and square-footage fetishists (Belgians call property obsession being born with a “brick in the stomach”), but I accept it’s a sordid little vice, on a par with reading the Daily Mail sidebar on women having secondary sexual characteristics while wearing clothes.

Fantasies of home are especially potent at the moment, because nothing clarifies your thoughts and dreams about home as much as the long, dull reality of being stuck there. Even though no one and nothing is moving at the moment, property fantasies are especially potent, because nothing clarifies your thoughts and dreams about home as much as the long, dull reality of being stuck there.

Continue reading...

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Banning knockoff buildings might bring a renaissance in Chinese architecture

After decades of allowing ersatz imitations, the government is finally returning to the country’s culture for inspiration

In bad news for postmodern ironists, the People’s Republic of China has announced a ban on “plagiarising, imitating and copycatting” foreign architecture. For a good quarter of a century, Chinese developers have been entertaining the world’s urban theorists and architectural pontificators (as well as good number of the country’s own people) with imitations of western buildings. It wasn’t just a case of make-believe English villages and multiple Eiffel Towers but also new-minted icons, fresh from the pages of architecture magazines. Norman Foster’s Century Tower in Tokyo, for example, popped up in Shenzhen, with somewhat less crisp detailing. Sometimes Las Vegas hotels, themselves knockoffs of historic monuments, would in turn be knocked off.

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In lockdown, gardens have become the new great social divide | Torsten Bell

The Office for National Statistics has discovered huge inequalities in access to private outside space

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

The Leaver/Remainer gap was huge but in this pandemic what recently seemed like the Grand Canyon of divides now feels … oh so very last year. But new divisions have sprung up.

This year it’s all about those with gardens versus the rest, unsurprisingly, given that access to outdoor space makes a huge difference to experiences of lockdown. There’s a very good reason why use of parks is up 16%, according to Google – and that was before we lifted the mother of all lockdown restrictions and let people sunbathe.

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In lockdown, gardens have become the new great social divide | Torsten Bell

The Office for National Statistics has discovered huge inequalities in access to private outside space

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

The Leaver/Remainer gap was huge but in this pandemic what recently seemed like the Grand Canyon of divides now feels … oh so very last year. But new divisions have sprung up.

This year it’s all about those with gardens versus the rest, unsurprisingly, given that access to outdoor space makes a huge difference to experiences of lockdown. There’s a very good reason why use of parks is up 16%, according to Google – and that was before we lifted the mother of all lockdown restrictions and let people sunbathe.

Continue reading...

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An abundance of birthday flowers

My daughter’s birthday means sowing far too many blooms. What better way is there to celebrate?

It is Kala’s birthday this weekend. I am hoping we will celebrate in her garden, with cake and suitable distance. She’d planned to spend it in Denmark. I sometimes feel I won’t cope if we, too, can’t go soon. I conjure the hepatica in my head, the greening of the larch, the lilac-lined cycle tracks, the swallows, the cuckoos, the wild orchids, the swooning lapwing, the sound of sea on sand.

Kala has been ill and isolated, so I’ve been doing daily drops at her door – she lives four houses away. I’d leave packages on the step, ring the bell and then move back to talk to her. Luckily, she made a good recovery a few weeks ago, though we are still very under-hugged.

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