My favourite colour

I moved into my office about a year ago. It was a room swap with my daughter. In her teenage years, she had always wanted the smallest room, even when offered a bigger one. She had painted it grey - my favourite colour is green. (Which is probably not a surprise to readers!). I had craved her space because it looked out onto our small garden and the trees in the small gardens beyond. From here you can watch the birds flitting from tree to tree, watch the squirrel raid the bird feeders and marvel as the fox wobbles his way across the top of the fences separating the backs of the gardens.

The paint is called ‘Plant Power’ it was made for my office!

As she returned from university with more stuff, we revisited the room question and agreed a swap. I downsized, casting off all the BBC working from home folders and files. I got excited about paint colours and blue-tacked various samples to the walls. Mostly shades of green! I sent off for some carpet samples too, if the grey walls and skirting were going, so was the grey carpet.

But there it stopped. Life took over. As we say in our house: people to see, places to go, things to do. And podcast episodes to research, record, edit, script and make. Autumn and Spring passed with the samples stuck to the walls though I think they had fallen off and disappeared beneath other piles of stuff by the time we reached summer.

However as I write this, there has been progress. My office has been emptied, I really do have a lot of gardening books. Papers waiting to be filed are still waiting to be filed but secreted in filing drawers. The blind is down and the carpet pulled up. (Council bulky waste order booked.) The space is empty just waiting for the ‘Plant Power’ (great name) green paint and ‘Gluten Free’ (odd name) neutral from a company called Lust Paints.

What has prompted this sudden springing into action? Well it’s something rather sad to be honest. My sister and I are currently clearing my parents house, the place they lived all their lives. My mum aged 97 is no longer able to live alone. So we’re taking apart a home and in the midst of all that I suddenly felt the need to be creative and constructive in another corner of life and my office appears to be that corner. Creating a space in which I can tuck away in the winter months, surrounded by things I love, suddenly felt important.

And my dad taught me to paint. It was always ‘all in the preparation’ in other words the ‘boring bit’. Yesterday I did the boring bit very carefully. I recall we were once painting my bedroom pink - pre-green days - and dad stepped off the ladder onto the pot of paint which tipped, spreading out across the sheeting, that was thankfully covering the carpet. (As I said - its ‘all in the prep’.) Seeing it happen in a slow-motion sort of way, I called him “a walking disaster area!” At which point he collapsed into giggles and became totally helpless with laughter, it was sometime before we could bundle up the sheeting and carefully hide it in the garage. We didn’t think mum would find it as funny!

Bits of home will find their way into the office too, dad’s pipe holder, the pottery mug mum made with my initial on it, maybe one of dad’s paintings.

So excuse me if the podcast episode due on Tuesday pushes back a week. I think I do need to finish the job I have started. Others are luckily away and don’t realise that the contents of my office are currently all over their bedroom floors but they will return. I do hope that Plant Power is as gorgeous on the walls as it looks in the tin. And that the carpet I have chosen will look as lovely as it does in my imagination.

I am looking to add a few more houseplants so if anyone has any suggestions do please let me know. I do have 2 Sansevieria or Snake Plants (other rather cruel name - mother in law’s tongue) that I took as leaf cuttings as part of my RHS Level 2 course, that I think might look nice in the space. Other’s who have done their Level 2 may remember this part of the propagation course and have the same plant!

So I’m am off to paint today - I’ll share a photo on completion.

Have a lovely weekend.

Sally

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