Anna the Nana

My two new things this week are delightfully reminiscent of a description of the favourite past-times of a 75-year-old: planting a herb garden and playing bridge. I say ‘delightfully’ here because my original use of the adverb ‘awfully’ put such a negative spin on two perfectly lovely activities. Let’s just not mention the fact that some of my other current favourite past-times are going for a morning constitutional, listening to National Radio and drinking cups of tea. Someone hold me back from the cross-stitch patterns.


The herb garden was inspired by the desperate screams (or rather fed-up sighs) of this overgrown barrel in our garden, wanting to be freed from the over-exuberant weeds that had taken residence.

It was time for an extreme makeover. The fun part (and the toddler's dream) was the ripping, the slashing, the digging and discarding.

For some unknown reason it was apparently necessary for me to visit three different garden centres in order to acquire compost, potting mix, potted parsley and coriander and a pair of cute little garden gloves for my toddler. Maybe it’s just that garden centres are rather pleasant places to visit. Uh oh, that’s my inner 75-year-old grandmother talking again.

The hardest part was lugging the compost and the potting mix over to the barrel from the car. Once the soil was in, the plants were planted, and hey presto, there we have it – a real-live herb garden. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s all really very easy and should never again take me six months of living in a place before finally getting round to planting a herb garden. (Disclaimer: unless in that six months I happen to have a baby and get the house renovated and be living with a toddler.)

My other new thing for the week was to learn to play bridge, which at some point in my life I had confused with cribbage, so I was slightly disappointed when I didn’t get to play with one of those cool little wooden boards with the pegs. Still, bridge proved to be easy to pick up for someone who has played 500 before – it’s basically the same but with no kitty, no bowers, no joker, and different scoring. Oh and the partner of the bid-winner gets to just lay all their cards down and take a little rest, while their partner plays for them. OK, so it’s quite different.

I’m hoping our little bridge club will become a regular Sunday-night thing, especially if it means my husband will cook a gorgeous dinner and one of the players will bring a home-made cheesecake. And I’m glad to have another possible retirement activity up my sleeve.