End of Year Ramblings

I rang my brother the other day to ask him what he wanted for Christmas, he immediately said 'World domination,..... failing that several million pounds please.' What he intended to do with those I didn't dare ask and since I couldn't quite stretch to either this year, he's had to make do with a book, but it did bring up how daft that question can be. When I think about what would be a really useful present, what I really need is a sackfull of round tuits ....... I simply didn't get enough this past year.

I did want a truce with the local wildlife, for those who don't know, my own postage stamp garden is solely used as a seed growing area, the real stuff goes on at my mother's house. I lost a huge number of seedlings to the local 'Bottomless Belly Wildlife Club' (all comers welcome, nightly meetings, bring own napkin) early last spring. I was going to ask the ravenous rapscallions to try my neighbours plants for once but this was foiled when the neighbours gravelled the entire area and decorated with garden art and plastic flowers (I kid ye notte). In light of this the seedhouse lays empty when it should be full to the brim of seedlings and plantlets from my autumnal hortic activities. Instead I lose more floor space in what is supposed to be my living area.

Which brings me to the next, no more house plants, I rarely buy myself a house plant but people get to hear you're a gardener and the next thing you know your house is full of green, dangly, frondy things they can't grow or have bought as a well meant thank you. Then there are all the seeds of tender plants you really want to grow and ............. well, you know the story, it's a sad and all too common tale. I'd like to charge them rent for the windowsill and floor space but all I get is dropped leaves and constant pleas for water, bigger pots and for the heating to be at least a little higher than ice box (I'd like that too)!

The other thing I would have liked to have done is sort out and keep on top of the front garden grass invasion force at Mother's house. We succeeded in the spring, we dug up all the plants, ripped out the grass weeds, dug in compost and replaced the plants. It was a battle victoriously but hard won and by autumn the war was spectacularly lost. There wasn't grass in the front garden for almost 2 decades, they are making the most of it now they have a root hold. Her neighbours have become used to the idea that it's a wildflower area, it's a good excuse to have a messy garden and get away with the bluff of actually wanting it to look that way. Never be taken in with the idea that a wildflower garden is low maintenance it takes at least as much as any other kind of outdoor garden. If you want low maintenance, take it from muggins here, grow concrete.

So you see, I really do need those tuits for the new year, otherwise you might just find Baa, a curled up shadow on the herbaceous back lawn sobbing into the mud.

cute story Baa...and definitely one we can all relate to. You have a Happy New Year!

If you do get a sackful of round tuits, Baa, can I trade for a few for me? LOL I love your writing!

I was going to get those seeds started (honest) but I lacked...

I was going to sort through all my old catalogues (really) but I never got a...

I was going to double-dig the area where the rock garden is being installed (seriously) but somehow, not having gotten...

I do know how it is. So if anyone can spare a few round tuits, please, I will trade anything I have (except my crazy cat ;D She just happens to be a square peg in a (c'mon, you know, a ROUND TUIT).

Baa, you're the best! love the writing. and I need a sackful of those too!!!

Baa, I was thinking about this earlier today, and (I apologize, but I have a very odd sense of humor); a few million pounds here would only buy 1 Senator. I don't know what the going rate is this year, but unless you would offer a few million pounds of gold, outta luck for even national dominion (here in US) ;D

I think the money was more of a stocking filler idea for emigration to Barbados.

I someone were to ask what I really wanted for Christmas, I would have to say I long for a Garden Slave... someone young and vigorous that seldom tires and likes to lift things and dig things and stack rocks and....so on and so forth. I could sit at the end of the yard and shout orders, soothing my tonsils with a cold drink... ah, yes!

Ah yes, round tuits and garden slaves. No matter how many times I ask, they never materialize and I've been asking for lo these many years now.

I did get a plant room in the back, with a counter to keep the necessary books on and space for potting and sorting and making crafty messes, with the chest freezer as a back up counter for the over flow. It will soon be overrun with seedlings of several varieties of violas and other small green sprouts. What fun, in over my head again and I haven't even made out a single seed order!

World domination sounds a right boring occupation and a million pounds would just create a load of tax burdens. I know, I know, bursting bubbles left and right, but really, what would you DO with the world? Make everyone play well together? Can't even make that happen in a nursery school! Unless you give them all lots of green growing things to plant, which would use up the money very fast. That is, quite possibly, the answer. People who are really truly gardeners with dirt under their nails and seedlings in all the most unimaginable places in the house are almost never contentious. They are in touch with the pulse of the earth and trying very hard to treat her with nothing but kindness so she will sing to them in flowers.

Hmm, what do I want? Green growing things on every window sill and every scap of dirt and everyone to realize that they really are only a piece of nature.

WZ Have to say I wouldn't want a garden slave, they wouldn't get it right! *G*. Housework slave, yes definitely go for one of them. A few years back in Hampshire you could hire male cleaners who wore just aprons while they worked, I'm not sure the company is still going now but it was very popular back then. Not my type of thing but I suppose it saved on the cleaners laundry bills.

Got to have space for Violas Kathleen! Not sure what my brother was thinking of, knowing him it'd probably be like the little boy having an hour of fun with a stick and an ant hill. He's just found outdoor gardening (strictly houseplant man until this past year) maybe it was a request for domination of his patch of world, we all want a bit of that *G*

This is such a thought provoking thread! Often, when the lottery gets really big and everyone but me is buying tickets, I hear dozens of pipe dreams. No one seems to really think it all through, but this thread has. No millions of anything, no amount of power and no staff of slaves would really change much for the better, for very long. But I find that I hesitate to use the round tuit, it brings too many offers of (incompetent) help, and as Baa says, they don't do it right. Nope, my wish is for serenity. The kind which allows me to stroll through the gardens with a glass or cup of liquid appropriate to the season, gaze upon the numerous false starts and failed attempts, and maintain composure, instead of setting the cup/glass down and forgetting where I put it because I simply can't stand that mess of invasive straggler daisy another minute. The kind of serenity which allows me to walk through the pasture without carrying a bag and hand spade, without making dozens of piles of rocks and limbs and seeds I plan to come back for, and probably never will anyway. The kind of serenity which allows me to believe my gardens aren't the only ones which exist mostly in my mind, and further allows me to just sit back and leave visitors to sort it out for themselves, instead of apologizing and explaining as if I was late with my homework paper. Ah, yes, serenity, which I shall attain as soon as I get a round tuit.

Aimee, you have struck upon something that is truly valuable. Yes, serenity. I've never been very good at serenity. It seems I must fill up every moment with something... most often, in the big scheme of things, it is just busywork.

Working in the soil is one way to set the mind free while keeping the hands busy. I've found the same serenity in kneeding bread. Work is being done, but the mind is free. How nice to be able to stand still without searching for excuses!

Nature has a way of making you stop dead in your tracks to view the wonder of its beauty. I could work for hours and weeks and months and years to put together the right plants in the right places, but ultimately, even in a pile of junk, nature will find a way to make it all beautiful... and it really doesn't require any of my busy work efforts.

My greatest wish is that I never become so obsessed with my busywork that I miss some beauty in nature... a cloud formation, the play of light through the trees... those moments that are serenity at its best.

Aimee and Carol, we are learning, aren't we. Sometimes I think God gave me the creaks in my joints just to slow me down. I've always been able to sit and let nature soak into my skin, lots of folks around here call it lazy, but when you're a poet or a photographer or a gardener it's really about letting the moment show you where it wants to take you. I love the leaf!

The leaf is from one of our cottonwood trees. In the early fall they start dropping from the trees, and this one landed on a plywood table with some visquene on it. It was a wet day.

How easy it would have been to pass up such a common occurrence. You just never know where you will find beauty until you look. Here is a rock & some leaves on an old blue plastic tarp one frosty morning.