Lay the tombstone

Americans are a funny old lot, so similar and yet so different from the rest of the world. Whilst there are a great many things to admire in Americans, there is one all to obvious failing. Reluctant as I am to pick fault, sometimes I am bound to tell it how it is. Let it be known that when it comes to gardening, the average American is to be found sadly wanting. The average foreigner, myself included, can be deluded for many years before uncovering the truth.

All foreigners know that the right thing to do, is to visit a garden centre and buy a packet of seeds or maybe, if extravagance gets the better of us, a very small plant. The small plant, no greater than three inches under any circumstances, must be taken home, planted with care in just the right spot and then nurtured with love and mature in equal proportions for years thereafter. Then, the said plant will grow and bloom. The owner enjoys the delightful experience with patience and an ever blossoming wisdom for the meaning of life.

Americans on the other hand, favour instant gardening. Instant gardening involves buying mature plants in gallon tubs, sometimes more than one gallon tubs, often to include 10 foot trees. They then have the audacity to remove huge clods of earth and dump the plants in the holes such that within the course of the average afternoon they can go from moonspace to landscape. I mean, however you view this kind of behaviour, it’s basically cheating!


English people are renowned for being gardeners, regardless of the national shortage of castles. This is a whole nation devoted to the lifting of Dahlia tubers to over winter, wrapped in newspaper. Civilization is maintained by perpetuating geraniums in hot houses in our green and fragrant land. Our American cousins are scandalously derelict in their duty to Pelargoniums, where they are left to ramble through roses and grow without check like the prolific weeds that they are, the plants not the people, that is to say. They are a strange people that defy accurate translation.

Meanwhile.

I skip around the garden centre until I am forced to leave by the silent shout from my under-funded bank account.
“Can we help you out with that today?” she offers as they always do.
“No, I’ll be just fine, thank you.”
“Here, let me give you a hand,” offers the teenage girl. I give in. She probably wants to stretch her legs outside for a while rather than being cooped up in the check out stand. We trundle out with the trolly to the car, open the boot and start unloading. I open the side door, push back the seat, heave 5 foot, 3.6 gallons of White Lady Banks together with her tightly furled little rose buds into the space on the carpet, snap back the chair to hold her securely in place. The top blooms tickle the door on the other side as it nestles in the foot well, horizontal and happy.
“But you can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“It’s unhuman!”
“Er….yes, you’re right, it’s a plant?”
“I mean it’s mean.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know, it jus doesn’t seem right somehow?”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll be home in 20 minutes.”
“But lying down like that it……..looks..... kinda dead.”
“But it’s still alive, it’s only been lying down for a minute.”
“Ain’t it kinda cruel?”
“Um…..I don’t think it minds.”
“How d’you know?”
“Well it’s not as if it has a mind to mind really.”
"Ya think?"
"Sometimes."

Well I'm certainly glad to lay that myth to rest. Now I'm off to go and hug a tree.

Lay the tombstone

http://alien-in-a-foreign-field.blogspot.com/2008/04/lay-tombstone.html

‘The little Engine that could’ needs social skills

“Geez Madz, what are you wearing?” she hisses. We hug in the crowd and queue for our coffee.
“Emergency trousers.”
“Laundry?”
“Ooo you know me so well.” The coffee shop is very busy, there are lots of people and lots of noise.
“There had to be some reason why you’ve dressed your legs in brown balloons AND are out in public.” I am an intuitive person and so I pick up on her tone of derision. The hands on hips, knee forward body language helps too. We step towards a minute table. She takes the bench on the wall as she needs to people watch. I take the bent wood chair so that I can face her down.

“You need a dresser I swear!”
“No I don’t, I need a laundry maid.”
“O.k. I’ll give you that one.” She picks at her pastry.
“It’s true though. If my closet contained all of my clothes and all of my clothes were clean, I would always dress appropriately.”
“I sometimes wonder if you know what ‘appropriate’ means?” she adds distractedly as a man snaps his newspaper. “You’re not gonna eat?”
“Can’t be bothered to fight with the retainer.”
“You should take it out. The coffee will stain it,” she nods.
“I forgot to bring the little case thing, the retainer case. Anyway, I don’t want to waste valuable time negotiating for the key to the restroom.”
“You don’t need to go to the rest room. Just pull it out and drop it in your purse.”
“It’s not that easy. I need a crow bar to detatch it most days. It’s not something I can do discretely. I need privacy so that I brace myself against the sink.” Her eyes do that American whizzy thing, which means that we do not understand one another. It would not be helpful for me to explain further. If I explain that removing something from my mouth in public, is about 50 times worse than brushing my hair in public, then my foreigness will be exposed, as well as my age. I skip back on topic.
“Hmm. I’ll have you know that for this particular occasion, I am completely appropriate.”
“Really! Explain yourself!” She leaves off ‘missy’ for which I am eternally grateful.
“Well, we’re here, at the coffee shop, where they serve predominantly….coffee, which is brown and stains things.”
“I thought you said that tea stains worse?”
“I did. Don’t distract me.”
“O.k…….so?”
“Would you like to stroke my leg?”
“Excuse me?” she bleats.
“No! They’re really, really, really soft.” She places a couple of finger tips on my leg just above the knee. She grabs a handful and scrunches it, “Geez what are these made of anyways?”
“I have no idea.”
“What does the label say?”
“I have no idea.”
“Scootch round, let me see,” she commands. I swivel and bend so that she can attack the back of my waist band. “Where’s the label gone?”
“I cut it off.”
“What!” I can tell that she’s annoyed with me, that we have performed this little scenario unnecessarily, but it’s her fault for barking orders at me. Woof.
“You didn’t try them on before you bought them did you!” she accuses.
“I didn’t need to. I felt them, I checked the size and I bought them.”
“They are never the right size for you. Look at them. They’re huge.”
“They fit perfectly around the waist.” I pre-empt. I pull up my t-shirt an inch so she can check because I suspect she might be a visual learner and I already know that she is the doubting Thomas pokey type of person. Despite the goosepimpled floppy flesh, the evidence is there.
“I don’t understand? What size are they? Or what size were they before you cut the label off?”
“14.”
“14! You’re nuts. You’re never a 14.”
“I am so.”
“American or UK?”
“American.” Her face scrumples from grape to raisin, “honest! My waist is 32.”
“Not inches? Are you pulling the European centimeter crap on me?”
“No.”
“I don’t get it. Why have you tucked the hems into your socks?”
“Ah! That’s because they’re several yards too long and they make this really irritating clickety clackety noise.” I see her mouth open with the next question, so I whip out the hems and jump to my feet. I trot up and down, back and forth in front of her, on a little clickety clackety circuit on the quarry tiles, because I don’t know if she is an auditory learner?
I sit back down and park my feet up the bench next to her so that she can examine the snap fasteners on the hems.
“No,” she says demurely as she folds her arms neatly under her chests. I wiggle my toes in a tempting manner and grin because she is so easy to tease.
She pouts with exasperation, “you are so……?” She hunts for the right word because I have effectively scrambled her word retrieval system. I hope she’s going to say ‘annoying.’
“Did they beat you up a lot at that Boarding School of yours?”

‘The little Engine that could’ needs social skills

http://alien-in-a-foreign-field.blogspot.com/2007/10/little-engine-that-could-needs-social.html