Remember at Sunday School or in the infants class when the topic turned to the Bible and God and you could nearly 'see' a big old man with a long white beard and a kindly rosy face like everybody's grandad. So...who was his wife? Mother Nature of course! I can 'see' her now ...a cross between Hannah Hauxwell and my mum. A force to be reckoned with indeed. Anyway during the last few weeks of lambing and weather and gardens and soggy lawns me and Her have had a few set to's ....they take me straight back to being 15 and not allowed to go to the dance when ALL my friends were...and my question is still the same now as then ...'WHY?'
We moved into this hovel on the hillside in April 1997 and the following spring I bought some lovely plants from a plant sale at Bridgnorth market. Forsythia ..it flowers, Mock Orange...it flowers and smells, Golden Buddleia...it flowers, proper geraniums...they flower and have spread and a camellia...nothing! Nice leaves... shame about the flowers. It has even been mentioned with posterity in a local version of gardener's questiontime...too dry, wrong soil, wrong position...sod it! I left it there on the corner of the flower border and swore at it profusely over the years...threatened it with the bonfire, watered it with the hosepipe with great force ...all to no avail.
For a similar amount of years I have also been fighting with a gooseberry bush that insisits it WILL grow near the front door in a crack in the front path. I have cut it down, weedkillered it, creosoted the stump, boiling water the lot! One poor drunken friend fell in it one hot August night as she left...could never work out why she was covered in long scratch marks the next day.
Last year in a particularly fed up moment I uttered those fateful words ....'OK, OK you can 
stay....I'm fed up with trying to eradicate you'...BUT Mother Nature can we have a bit of co-operation here? If I let that swine of a thorny bush stay right by the front door, in everybody's way could you at least do something about old misery down there and let's have a few flowers?
stay....I'm fed up with trying to eradicate you'...BUT Mother Nature can we have a bit of co-operation here? If I let that swine of a thorny bush stay right by the front door, in everybody's way could you at least do something about old misery down there and let's have a few flowers?They exist not three feet apart ....Gooseberry bush larger than ever, loads of flowers this year, bumper crop expected ...dozens of legs WILL be scratched. People will wonder why this batty woman has a gooseberry bush by the front door...'what a stupid place to have a gooseberry bush!'. I've heard 'em say it!
Camellia however ...wait for it.....covered in dark red flowers...for the first time in 11 years! Good old Mother Nature...awkward old cuss!
9 comments:
Be careful Mother Nature isn't trying to leave you anything else. Keep your eyes open for the baby under the gooseberry bush!
Ha! Lovely blog and one that I can SO relate to. Hilarious about the gooseberry bush. Typical about the camellia....Everything here is in the wrong place too - girt big privet at the very front of a very deep border; enormous patch of big daisy things nearly in the middle of the steps down to the lawn....sigh sigh triple sigh.
Hope the jam and the pies make all the scratched legs worth while.
That was a brilliant blog-laughed out loud at your sense of humour and especially your friend and the gooseberry bush!
very entertaining my dear.
Sorry you won't be able to meet the 22nd-will be thinking of you.
xx
In this part of the world we just have to go with what grows and also where it wants to grow don't we?
I still think that's very awkward of Mother Nature, contrary mare that she is.
Gawd there is just NO rhyme or reason is there.
And what lovely flowers well worth waiting for...Are you playing this week?? why don't you try and come here at the weekend and we'll go meet jane ??
I really enjoy reading your blogs and playing gooseberry. Hope you get lots of pies
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