2026/45 - Do they have fog in Singapore?

 When I cleared out my old tomatoes in the greenhouse this morning, that question popped up randomly. Do they have fog in Singapore? Misty mornings? Dew? Surely they must have dew.

Early misty morning in Brielle

Since there are many readers of this blog in Singapore, I tend to wonder about that tiny island country next to Malaysia. My avid documentary watching has taught me that the Singaporians (is that a word?) are very nature conscious. Which gives me a warm feeling, as I am a desperate greenie myself.

Everything was wet. Watching these reed plumes at the gate to the allotments, gave me the idea to do a special about grasses soon. They are the most productive and successful plants in my allotment garden after all!

Anyway, whilst thinking about what more Singaporians and I have in common ( I know! Balcony gardens!), I threw the spent tomato plants on my compost heap, and realised my Cardoons have never been more bedraggled than this year. Still, they survived two gales already, so I decided to leave them where they are for the moment. I did prune the yellow Raspberries.

And then got three thorns in my hands while tying up my Dogrose. It has behaved itself for 8 years already, but this summer it suddenly went wild. Its branches are more than 1m long now, and were smothering the Myrrh beside it. So I put some canes with it. It used to live on my balcony, but got too large there, so I rehoused it 4 yrs ago, and it likes my heavy clay.

All plants being wet does make a welcome change from all plants being bone dry and on the brink of dying, I must admit! So far all plants I rehoused from my balcony garden are doing great! I expect the Begonias to give up at the first frost though.

Not a clue what this plant is! It is a spontaneous squatter next to the white Broom. But it is very pretty! I hope it will stay, I will even prune back that Broom to make it more at home and give it some room. I firmly believe in the concept that a garden gets the plants it deserves. When they arrive, and decide to stay, then they feel at home!

This pretty Scabious is proof that deadheading works. It has been blooming for 6 months already. The chocolate Knautia I planted next to it, has disappeared after one year though...such a sissy.

Predominantly green, still! I am content I decided to plant a lot of evergreens. When the allotments around my plot have all turned to brown and grey, I still have islands of green.

I took Puck to her favourite spot at the river. It is a favourite socialising spot for the gulls as well. The small ferry has stopped ferrying now, so the birds will have their resting spot until services are resumed in April. It is just for foot- and cyclist passengers now, but I can remember going to the other side on the bus!

Okay, from Puck and me, have a good week, wherever you are. Do visit my website when you want to read more about (historic) Brielle at Renée Grashoff Schrijft I hope the weather treats you kindly.

Renée Grashoff 

2026/44 - Halloween Special

Last week I told you a little about the attitude towards Halloween in my country, right? How Calvinistic beliefs made (and make) a 'pagan' or 'Catholic' festival hard to swallow. But Brielle is not part of our hardcore Bible Belt, and anything that calls folk into our town centre is considered to be A Good Thing. So...Brielle celebrates Halloween.

That pumpkin (photo below) was a gift three years ago. But that's all beside the point. The point being, that we do love a party in my town!

A few days ago there was supposed to be a pumpkin market, but it had to be cancelled due to a gale sweeping across: very high winds and a downpour that made the plants on my balcony beg for snorkels.

There is this ship in the waterway leading to the proper inner town harbour, that goes all out every year, with huge black tarantulas stuck to the bow and in the rigging, and a skeleton for a captain. Brilliant, it never gets old! And this year there was a parade; prizes for the best costumes.

It was great fun, good weather (cold, but dry) and the good folk of Brielle were out in force. I'll give you an impression:

Such fun! We sure love to dress up in this town. 

I hope you'll forgive my excursion this week...Next week it will be back to allotments, plants and all things green, I promise 😘 Have a good week, wherever you are, and enjoy your own Halloween!

Renée Grashoff 

2026/43 - Pumpkins? I wonder how they sound!

 Brielle is a beehive of Summer activities from April to the end of September. In October it morphes without a stop into the Winter festivities. There is the choir festival, the Big Band competition, and then we have the totally alien* Halloween, blown across the pond from the USA due to films. Pumpkins appear in shop windows and by front doors. Perhaps we should listen to their music?

My garden has yet again failed to produce a single pumpkin. I had sown the seeds, but they shrivelled up due to the heat, or were eaten by mice. Luckily others on the allotments were better at it, so there are plenty of pumpkins to celebrate with. Or to eat...

* A large portion of Dutch citizens still regard Halloween as an alien, weird and perhaps even blasphemous party. It is the Calvinistic heritage, I suppose. I simply think 'go for it, if it pleases you'. When my kids were between 9 and 16, I threw a Halloween party for them every year, I do love a good party. They really threw themselves into it - their Mum's blood. But now that they live their adult lives, I have given up on Halloween. I prefer these gorgeous Malus apples to a pumpkin anyway.

Musical plants

Do you watch Gardener's World (BBC)? On Oct. 16th they had an item about the electric current plants and trees produce. Some genius has the ability to convert it to a musical key, and what then happened blew me away!

It sounded so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes. I would buy an album of that music. I adore plants/trees anyway, but I look at them with totally different eyes now!

So I wonder what my blue grape was singing about this snail slowly making its way to the top. Probably the blues!

The Ixia and multi coloured rose 'Masquerade ' enjoying the sun

In between a lot of rain there was some sunshine as well this week, so I took the opportunity to mow my grass paths, and replanted the last batch of plants from my balcony planters.

Always such a satisfying job, mowing my grass! I don't know why people dislike it so much that they buy robots to do it.

This is the still colourful plot of my neighbour three plots down. Like me, she has Solidago the Thug to deal with, and had ripped out bags and bags of it, to bring to the municipal yard. I wish I had had the foresight to do that four years ago! I foolishly put it on my compost heap and spread out that compost a year later...idiot! I bet that Solidago sounds like The Sex Pistols.

My greenhouse border, which is slowly turning into a Lily and Iris collection.

The Aster lateriflorus 'Horizontalis' at its best on the left, and the Begonias on the right, with the Dead-Nettle front right.

The other tin planter with some Erigeron, Verbena Bonariensis, a lost Calendula and masses of Monarda. Oh, by the way, it is too wet for the Hornets now, but at the start of the week they were still out in force.

The Waterlily is sinking down, always a sure sign that the temperatures are down as well. You can just about see the woodpile, where a hedgehog has its home. I swear my old dog pool has plugged that leak in my old frog pond...since it is there the water around it is not draining away. Who would have thought that the equivalent to a patch would have this effect! I am happy I did not give up on it in the end! I have seen watervoles, mice, the hedgehog and lots of birds there.

Do visit my website at Renée Grashoff Schrijft to read my blogs about historic Brielle, and have a calm week, wherever you are.

Renée Grashoff 

2026/42 - Slow Living (and Gardening!)

 When you watch a lot of gardening programmes, and I do, it might occur to you there are roughly three kinds: the quick-fix 'rip it all out and put a load of decking/pebbles/posts with a few plants in', the 'taking-it-very-seriously organic veg growing', and the 'take your time, for crying out loud, plants need time to grow' variety.

After the gale

Needless to say I am of the third variety. First of all, I think wooden decking is very overrated, and furthermore I am utterly convinced that we all need to slow down. A lot!

Slow living

When I took on my allotment just after Covid, I started gardening with the long view in mind. Lack of funds, lack of time, a very high-maintenance, reactive, traumatised rescued dog, they combined to make me realise I would not be able to create the garden I was dreaming of in a hurry. Was that a problem? Absolutely not!

Right from the start I knew it would take years. And that was the whole point, as it were. This garden was supposed to remind me of the importance of keeping going in my older years. There is no rush, the seasons will change whether I have painted that sorry excuse for a shed (nope) or not. Every winter I make a plan, but if I cannot do it all, because I break my arm, or because my pond springs a leak, or simply because my old car needs new brakes (gulp!), then that is fine. I will simply do it the year after.

Sometimes it is frustrating, that pond was an eyesore, but mostly I can live with it. And the thing that always lifts my heart and keeps me going, are those plants, that slowly change according to season and their age. To me, those 10 Heleniums I have in bloom right now, after planting just one 4 years ago, are worth more than 40 of them if I had planted them in bulk. 

The same goes for my Roses. I buy them in the Sale, I give them my love, I watch them grow, and add slowly to my collection. A Rose a year.

My Schneewitchen has had a gale blowing across the balcony from left to right this week, and just look at her! Heroic!

So, no quick-fixes for me, thanks. "You are simply getting old!", said someone to me. True, I am. But it goes deeper than that, much deeper. An example: when I see the youths in my town whizzing past on their fat bikes, with their eyes fixated on their mobile phones, I remember the time when youths communicated with their mouths. I see people walking their dogs, with their eyes stuck to their phones. And I worry about their sanity, honestly, I do. Those poor dogs...

Slow gardening

Research shows that plants, especially the less regimentally planted ones, help lessen people's stress levels. It shows that children, as soon as they are shown that strawberries grow on plants and not come covered in plastic from a factory, are fascinated, and want to try to grow them. It shows that people from all backgrounds and ages, working an allotment together, suddenly find a common ground to talk about, when in the street they would probably not engage.

Yes, my hair is blue due to a band gig.

Gardening is good for your health!

This morning I drove my railing planters to Hunky Dory. Since I decided I would change my balcony garden to a (hopefully more practical and less water consuming) Mediterranean garden, it needed some heavy lifting and a lot of digging. Those planters simply needed watering twice a day...too much, too wasteful.

But, as happens regularly, my knee gave out yet again, so I had to stop halfway through the planting.

Still, I got the Ponytail Grasses and Verbena Bonariensis into the ground.

One of the ten. Isn't it lovely?

It was a gorgeous morning, sunny, not a cloud to be seen, so the insects were out in force. And that smell! Almost nothing beats the smell of a dewy Autumn morning. The birds enjoyed it too, they sang their little hearts out, in between eating the last ripe Figs. Well, I say eating, but I should say pecking into a fig thrice and then leaving it...

At mornings like today those Pampas Grasses really shine.

Okay, this is it for this week. Visit my website at Renée Grashoff Schrijft when you want the latest news about my publications (translation button provided) and do take care, won't you?

Oh, Puck says 'hi'. Well, she would, if she was not snoring the house down. She lets it be known she's very happy she gets walked with full attention of me, and that we have great interaction. Me: "Look, Puck, that beaver has been here last night, there is a freshly gnawed tree!" Puck: "Yeah, whatever, gosh, this bush smells interesting!"

Renée Grashoff 

2026/41 - And Garden Life Goes On...with Hornets

 When I was dividing some plants, an ambulance drove up and stopped behind my car. Someone on the allotments had had a...mishap? I hope it wasn't more serious than that! But as I watched him being wheeled to the ambulance (I am next to the road), it occurred to me* that life is precious, and that it gets to be more of a lottery the older you get.

Desdemona

* now don't think I am a moron, I have know life is precious from when I was 16 and my beloved Gran died, and it suddenly hit me on that day that life is not perpetual. Just so you know.

See this Hedera? It is a bee magnet, that is why I planted it (okay, and to mask the ugly waterbutt behind it). But now it is also a hornet magnet...

There were at least 10 Asian hornets on there. Shock, horror!

Wasps, okay, I can deal with wasps. But hornets frighten me! Obviously I did not manage to get one properly on camera. Top left, that orangy thing, that's one. As soon as I tried to get a better photo, they scedadled. Which is sort of good to know. But still...

My comfy chair is right next to that Hedera. Damn.

My insect guide doesn't even mention the Asian hornet, only the European one (bottom left), as it did not occur in the Netherlands until this freaky hot  year. Well: the Asian is larger than it appears in this pic and has the orange back of that wasp top right. It can grow to 2,5 cm and the queens are 3 to 3,5 cm.

They fly to forage up to 500 - 800m from their nest. Fingers crossed the ones in my plot flew their maximum lenght! Said amongst eachother "hey, dudes, let's see how far we can get from the nest".

French Hornet Kamikaze

The reason hornets frighten me, stems from a holiday 36 years ago. My then husband and me cycled, with our large Drentsche Patrijs dog in a dog carrier, down a hill in Dordogne. Great fun, until my ex gave an almighty shout, and fell off his bike. Luckily he landed in the grassy verge, but when I got to him, he was as white as a sheet, sweaty, and on the verge of passing out. He mumbled something that sounded like "wasp!".

Sure enough there was a stunned European hornet next to him, the speed of the collision had been huge. In a reflex I stamped on it, and only later realised it was a hornet, not a wasp. It had stung him on his bare upper arm, which immediately swol up. He was in great pain. I tried to suck out the poison (should you do that with hornets? I still don't know, but I thought better to try than not to try) and then washed his arm with water, and bathed his neck, and did everything I could think of to help him.

Fortunately he recovered after a bit, much helped by our dog Freya who washed his face thoroughly. She was a very motherly dog. His bike was okay too, so we were able to cycle on to the nearest village, where the arm was looked to by the pharmacist. Hubby got a tube of cream, felt very sorry for himself for the rest of the day, but that was the end of that adventure.

Mind you, it left me with a mix of respect of and utter fear for hornets!

And now they have arrived on our allotments!

It occurred to me that perhaps that poor man being stretchered off our allotments had been stung, and had an allergic reaction. But that is the way my mind works.

Okay, please visit my website Renée Grashoff Schrijft for more stories and the latest news about my books. And do spread the word about them on Goodreads, BookTok or whatever platform you use, please, if you enjoy my writing. I need funds to publish book number 3 of the trilogy. Thanks! 😘

Renée Grashoff