The aggrieved better half speaks*
Hey! My neighbours have lawns, with borders round them.** They look after the borders fine, and mow their lawns with three big roaring petrol-driven machines (one each). I have a garden, with a patch of grass one end which I mow with a doll-size electric mower in twenty minutes.*** The rest is flower-bed, which I cram. See photo. When I came this was lawn, with eighteen-inch-wide strips of bed round the edges, containing not much, and a few roses† lined up along the path.†† I also have a pond, which I dug and built last year and put a fountain into, so I’m now host to five frogs and a newt.††† OK, I do have a compulsion to keep any bit of timber, old iron, plastic sheeting, etc, that might come in useful some day.‡ Robin’s not the only one who’s allowed the odd obsession.‡‡ E.g showing up once a week with a tray of nicotiana, cleome, or whatever, that have simply got to be potted on a fortnight ago. ‡‡‡ . OK, there are weeds here and there. § I tell myself I’m letting them grow till they’re big enough to make useful compost. §§ And the junk-yard will be invisible by the end of the summer.§§§ (Impenetrable too, probably, but you can’t have everything. PD
* * *
* I hadn’t meant to be aggrieving. If I’d wanted to be aggrieving. . . .
** As I say, I hadn’t meant to be aggrieving. Listen, Peter’s neighbours give me the jumps.^ I swear they’re all out there with tweezers when I’m not looking. Although the sight of someone with tweezers in the garden would make me avert my eyes. Unless they were trying to pull a thorn out of an inconvenient place, in which case I would offer my assistance.
^ Well, the next-doors ask me for rose advice, so they’re my best friends. Their garden is still awfully tidy though.
*** I have no grass at the cottage, except what blows over the wall as seed and gets into things where it’s not wanted. Generally speaking I rather like weeding^, but weeding my gravel courtyard annoys me. At Third House I feel obliged to keep at least most of the lawn for the hellhounds, although some encroachment is already visible on the hedge side, with vast-once-they-get-going hedge-and-tree-eating roses, and camellias in pots. But I have Garden Man who comes round occasionally and cuts the grass. He brings his own mower.
^ No one who dislikes weeding can be a real gardener. There are apothegms to this effect, passed down from Eden. Well, since immediately after Eden, since Eden probably didn’t have weeds. Weeds are, after all, only plants in the wrong place^, and there were no wrong places in Eden.
^Which is another apothegm. I’ll stop now.
† An uninteresting selection of Austins. Feh.
†† But golly was it tidy.
††† And a few tadpoles, so stay tuned. Third House’s pond is teeming with tadpoles and I live in hope. I live in hope that the hellhounds don’t eat them. Peter’s frogs are tiny, and sit on the fronds of whatever-it-is with just their eyes and noses showing. They have shown no inclination thus far of saying ‘ribbet’ however. The newt stays among the fronds but you see tiny legs paddling occasionally.
When I was writing A Pool in the Desert I wanted to know what a newt’s eyes looked like: are they yellow, do they have vertical pupils, what? Peter even caught one for me briefly in a jam-jar–the pool at the old house was newt metropolis–and it was so tiny and so busy swimming around looking for the exit I still couldn’t tell. So I wrote to the British Herpetological Society and they didn’t know either. But they did warn me politely that newts are protected, and catching them in jam-jars is illegal.
‡ This is where I prove what a noble human being I am really and maintain a tactful silence.
‡‡ Oh yes? And which is the odd one?
‡‡‡ THOSE NICOTIANAS ARRIVED TWO DAYS AGO. TAKE IT UP WITH ROYAL MAIL.
§ Weeds are a sign of healthy soil.
§§ That too. Although I personally could do with less admirable composting material, especially at Third House.
§§§ [sotto voce] yaaaaay
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.
I was going to comment on the other post, but it vanished just as I clicked the comment button. I got a nice little haiku 404 message. :P
Anyway.
Hi Peter! Nice to see you here! Maybe you’ll be a semi-regular Guest Blogger?
Your garden is beautiful. I love the pond and the way all the plants look like a wall for it. My in-laws have a pond — not quite like yours — but I remember when they were putting it together. They put a lot of work into it, and I imagine you have, too. Those things aren’t easy to get going!
We have a pretty big yard (Robin, perhaps you’d like to come fill it up with roses?) so Jeff tries to keep the grass at a manageable level. I don’t mind overgrown grass, so long as I don’t have to wade through a jungle when I go outside! My neighbors mow a lot, though. If the day is sunny, there’s someone mowing somewhere around. What an ugly sound!
What did it LOOK like? I tried three or four times to stop BOTH PHOTOS SITTING BOTH ON EACH OTHER AND THE TEXT and having TOTALLY FAILED, gave up. It was worse than the other night with the roses, when I left them in. I@ll try again tomorrow when I’ve had some SLEEP and I’m going to put them in SEPARATE ENTRIES . . . and I’m also going to ask Blogmom about photos again. The awfulness of this is ridiculous.
Maybe you’ll be a semi-regular Guest Blogger?
********* Wouldn’t that be GOOD? I’m in a particular snit at Susan of Athens because I’ve been NICE, I *haven’t* tried to nag or inveigle him and he produced this entirely unprompted. And his thought processes are so DIFFERENT from mine.
Yes, I hate the sound of mowers! There are mowers EVERYWHERE! Let’s bring back SHEEP! (And furthermore, they make wool, and . . . )
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The text was on the left, and the photos were on the right. Not quite staggered like they had been in the other entries, but…on the right side. Definitely not on the left. I could see everything fine, though.
Jeff actually brought up the idea of having sheep instead of bothering to mow! He thought the wool plus grass-eating was a great deal. I don’t know if my yard is *that* big, though. Alas.
The horses used to do a great job eating the grass in Texas, but they nibbled right around the weeds. I didn’t know until recently that my parents did have to mow sometimes, just to get rid of the weeds. Lazy horses! I’m so disillusioned. ;)
Well, you have a couple of SMALL sheep (they’re herd animals, they don’t like being alone) and then you SUPPLEMENT with a little hay. :)
There are a couple of issues about live mowers: critters don’t eat what they don’t like the taste of and who can blame them!!!! –And horses in particular tend to have latrine areas in their fields where they don’t eat the grass for the obvious reasons, although you do get crap-nibbling horses.
Yes, the latest fad around here is goats.* They go around eating up all sorts of plants that you theoretically don’t want and get rid of them without chemicals and such. I generally think it’s great, although some of the goat people are a bit too enthusiastic for my taste about getting rid of the blackberries. Now, I KNOW that blackberries are an invasive alien species around here. I also know, both from picking them and from my old job in maintenance at the zoo (when I had to try to wrestle some out of the ground**) that they are nasty to haul out and hard to get rid of. But I LIKE blackberries. Sigh. Anyway, other than that, I think it’s a cool idea. We’ve talked about getting something like a goat for our yard (which is big enough), but are always put off at what else it might eat (since we have a large number of flowers, fruits, and veggies that we would want to enjoy ourselves rather than feeding them to the goat).
It was a nice day here. Sunny and 74 degrees (23 degrees Celcius), which as anyone knows only happens a few times per spring in Seattle and Tacoma). As it coincided with Memorial Day weekend, everyone was outdoors enjoying the weather (I love this about people around here; they’ll go out in any weather. Even pouring down rain people will still shrug and get out their ubiquitous raincoats/ponchos/umbrellas/all of the above and go out***, and if the sun comes out every park in the city fills up). I joined them, taking the bus down to the park that has my zoo+ and then biking all over the park (taking a look at the filled-to-bursting parking lots at the zoo and rejoicing that I had today off [oh well; it will be my turn come Monday]). Among other things, we have this enormous Rhododenron Garden, which is basically a patch of wild forest (the whole park is a huge chunk of mostly wild forest, with a few things like zoos and a beach and a twisty road taking you through the forest, plus paths through the woods) where someone planted lots of rhododendrons. I never used to be crazy about rhododendrons, but these are AMAZING, everything from little tiny delicate rhodies to big towering rhododendron trees (not sure if this is the appropriate name or if they’re still bushes, but dang it, they LOOK like trees), and this was probably the best week in the year to go see them. I picnicked there and then took aforementioned bike ride. It was generally nice, although most of the park roads are (gentle) hills, and the downhill sections go by FAR too fast for my taste. Now I am home, and a bit sad to be inside (but my body announced firmly that it is TIRED of sitting on things such as bike seats, forest floor, and even lawn, and it wanted FURNITURE). Mildly nervous about how I will feel tomorrow, too; this was my second bike ride this spring (I don’t mind getting rained on if I’m walking, but on a bike it annoys me), and the first ride was only 20 minutes long. Today’s ride, well… My guess is that the Five Mile Drive was just slightly over half my ride distance-wise, although I’m not sure. My body is already yelling at me to go take a hot bath and go to bed. Oh well; even if I feel awful afterwards, it was still worth it.
* Perhaps fad isn’t quite the right word; however, I have heard a lot of people talking about these goats in the last year.
** And these were young and tender blackberry bushes (relatively speaking, of course), not the huge thickets that have been around for years.
*** Of course, you have to have that sort of attitude if you don’t want to spend half the year indoors.
+ I was teased about this by my housemates: Don’t you spend ENOUGH time there, they asked. Yes, I replied, but only at the ZOO. I want to see everything ELSE.
Don’t go with the goats. Take it from me, everything will smell and it won’t be of flowers. There are five, or is it six organic acids named after goats (caprilic, caproic etc) and they all smell.
What a great duo you are! As charming and delightful working together as you are each on your own! (I am not surprised, simply charmed)
When we travelled more we used to do a rather good live dog and pony show. :)
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Waah! I want the dog and pony show!
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Find someone with LOTS of money and invite us. :)
Now this I have to add to my “when I win the lottery” list – there you are, top of the list, and the hellhounds get a special invite too – make that dogss and pony show LOL
(Spoken from under the bed) May you NOT win with lottery. . . :)
Dear Mr. Dickinson,
thank you for honouring us with your presence. I do feel that having got you to do an unofficial and mostly uncredited guest blog, it was a tiny bit unfair of Robin to add footnotes to your text. It seemed a bit like butting in AND getting the last word in all at the same time. I myself never met a weed I liked, but also feel that they have a right to life and try to let them be, as much as possible. Sometimes this has most fortuitous results, i.e. snapdragons. Sometimes not (excessive wild asparagus). A tidy garden, I feel, is the sign of: a) a person with too much time on their hands, b) an obsessive, c) someone not really interested in gardening, d) someone with no other interests in life, which refers back to (b). Your garden looks lovely. Thanks for sharing.
Hey! He sent it to me completely unsolicited saying ‘here, would you like to use this’! And I said, yes please, but I’ll add FOOTNOTES you know! And he said, Of course you will! –and how ‘mostly uncredited’??!? What do you want, a tattoo???
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Hahaha…. As I wrote the comment, I could see you stewing when you read it. I debated whether I should post it or not, but a bit of pepper never hurt a dish. Well last time you had guest bloggers you did a whole song and dance (not quite dog and pony show) saying yay! and how cool! and great! guest blogger! Here (I duck as I say it to avoid any weeds or rotting tomatoes or possible compost being thrown my way ;) you sound positively wifely, yea, like an English wife
And I quote and take your advice:
This is where I prove what a noble human being I am really and maintain a tactful silence.
bit of pepper never hurt a dish.
******** You’re mistaken. I don’t understand why you’re so determined to see me badly; Peter and I have been indulging in mutually recognised leg-pulling. I know he reads my blog and I tease him in it sometimes; I was delighted that he actually wrote something I could use; I told him I wanted to add footnotes and he said he’d been expecting that; I’ve also said that I hope he’ll write something I can use again some time; during any which exchange there will be more teasing.
Husbands are made for teasing. I think it’s one of the reason we get them, honestly. ;)
Be right back. I’m going to tease Jeff about something. *grin*
Husbands are made for teasing. I think it’s one of the reason we get them, honestly. ;)
*********** YES. I KNEW there was a reason. (However I’ve noticed that husbands seem to feel that way about *wives* and I’m not at ALL sure this is valid . . . :))
Be right back. I’m going to tease Jeff about something. *grin*
********** Oooh. Did it work? Please post! :)
Of course I don’t see you badly. I was just teasing YOU.
I’m sorry; some things DON’T translate in print and I can’t see the gleam in your eye.
Well I walked into his office to tease him, but then I couldn’t think of anything. He asked what was up, so I told him I was there to tease him, except I didn’t know what to tease him about! He told me I was cute.
Another reason why we keep them around. Good for random compliments. ;)
Good for random compliments. ;)
********* That too. I tend to respond really graciously too, like, Huh? Or, can’t you see I’m WORKING! Stop INTERRUPTING!!! :)
I’m the middle of three children. Half the comments I make are teasing. Even my ten year old nephew knows this about me, or perhaps I should say, particularly my ten year old nephew knows this about me. Now, so do you. I apologise if I upset you. My eyes were gleaming and I had a wicked grin on my face. No- I will not use a video camera to prove this. It is past two in the morning and the gleaming eyes have bags under them and are red with allergic conjunctivitis and too much computer use. I didn’t cook anything for my Mum’s birthday but we took her out for a great meal. Or rather she took us out. In Greece it’s the person with the birthday who treats everybody else.
In Greece it’s the person with the birthday who treats everybody else.
********* What a good system. Then no one person finds themselves doing it too often.
Well, I’m an only child and had an odd childhood, and Peter says I don’t know how to *play*. I have suspected more than once than my social-exchange humour bump is underdeveloped. :)
On the half-humorous note two questions re Peter’s pond and its tadpoles. Are the frogs the rip-it whip-it kind or the vrekekex, kouax, kouax kind, noise-making-wise? And are they edible, or do you have objections to frogs’ legs?
WE ARE NOT EATING OUR FROGS. And so far they make NO noise. I’d expect them to be the kouax kouax kind from looking at them however.
I didn’t say you SHOULD eat them ;P just asked whether they were edible. Just have chicken wings: very similar taste and a similar amount of bones.
Yes, everyone told me they’re just like chicken. They’re NOT just like chicken. Alligator is MORE like chicken and it’s not chicken either.
Oh, my goodness. Your garden is absolutely gorgeous. It’s so wonderful I can hardly stand it. I really really really wish I could have a garden like that. With frogs. And plants exploding out of everywhere except the napkin-sized lawn. Wow wow wow.
Hi, Peter! Hi, Robin! *Waves from across the world*
The garden is gorgeous. I want to move there.
Our garden is a work in progress – we bought the house eight years ago, so we haven’t really had much time to work on it. The Husband keeps buying more and more fruit trees and planting them along the back yard fences. Then he makes jam, which he is reluctant to share with friends and family, so we have a jam hoard in the back of a cupboard. He’s also had great success with cherry tomatoes, but not so much with larger ones, which seem to be irresistable to the local possums.
There’s a small rose garden right under Elder Daughter’s bedroom window, which we have added to, but I have no idea what most of the roses are. I really should go out with books and identify them – I know one is Peace because it had a label, but that’s about it. One of the others blooms in clusters bigger than my head, huge pink flowers and very fragrant.
P.S. What kind of tattoo? A rose, right?
I’ve forgotten whereabouts you are? **Fragrant** is good. After the heavy rain last night my roses are so heavy in the air today it’s almost literally intoxicating. :)
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I’m in Southern California. Northern Orange County, to be more specific.
The weather here has been seriously weird lately. In the past seven days, So Cal has had several days of temps in the high 90s-100s, followed by several days of snow in the mountains, torrential rains, thunderstorms, hail, flash floods, and the inevitable mudslides in the areas burned out by wildfires last year. We were lucky – just some rain and a lot of wind.
Fragrant are us – right now, the jasmine is blooming out front, the honeysuckle is in full swing in the patio, and the roses and orange tree are making merry in the backyard. The hummingbirds don’t know what to hit first, and some mornings it’s like being hit by a bucket of perfume no matter which door I go out of.
We’ve been having wildly fluctuating weather but yours is worse (I’m relieved to say).
Hullo Peter! About time we met you, as you’ve met all of us a hundred times over as we blather on and on in Robin’s comment spaces. :)
Newts like being caught in jam jars. It’s a Known Fact. Sometimes they do it themselves, in the wild, just for fun.
Actually you’re safe–he’s one of these strange mortals who doesn’t read comments! I’m going to ahve to TEACH HIM HOW so he can read *his.*
Newts like being caught in jam jars. It’s a Known Fact. Sometimes they do it themselves, in the wild, just for fun.
********* This could Explain Many Things. :)
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Thank you for guest blogging, Peter. I’m jumping out there and calling you Peter because Robin does. Then again she knows you…
Lovely garden you have there! We JUST finished the garden in front of our house. I live in Utah, in what is called High Mountain Desert,” so no sweet English garden for me. My husband and I decided to xeriscape all of our yards, and as of last night, the front yard is done. Wish I could post a picture because while it’s desert-y, it is beautiful. The plants rise out of gravel that looks like sandstone–4 cubic yards of it (the gravel) we shoveled and shoveled and shoveled–but it’s beautiful. (Was that a sentence?) The poppies are all getting ready to pop. Plants: Red and white yuccas, blue mist spirea, columbines, coral hedge thistle, basket of gold, wandering phlox, afore mentioned poppies, and Apache plume, which is a beautiful plant. And that’s for starters…
Until recently I have been unable to garden because of a very bad back. But (after some treatment) I am now back to gardening after 11 years! It feels like heaven.
And I, for one, think pulling weeds is mostly fun. I feel so very righteous after a round of weed-pulling. Oh! I also planted three containers today, mostly with chicks and hens and this other weird succulent that I just fell in love with.
I’m gardening again! (Thanks for letting me ramble.)
I’m gardening again!
********* Yaaay! :) What is xeriscape? (No, wait, I’ve just googled it. Okay.) So in your case this means gravel and desert plants. Why CAN’T you post a photo? I’d/we’d love to see.
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Please excuse the informality of address, as we haven’t been introduced, but – it’s good to see you here, Peter. :) How nice of you to dive into the maelstrom too!
“OK, I do have a compulsion to keep any bit of timber, old iron, plastic sheeting, etc, that might come in useful some day.”
I’m sure this tendency must be something linked with gender. Ray has some delightful piles/stacks of timber dotted around that he graciously allows to be used as display areas for convolvulus. As one of them has a north-facing side and seems to be viewed as semi-permanent, I’m starting to think seriously about trying to grow Tropaeolum Speciosum against it…
LOL!!!!
(I will make/enable Peter to read his comments tomorrow–he’s already gone to bed as I’m doing my daily unscreening. But he’s not a keyboard chatter–his emails tend to be pithy to the point of indecipherability–so I don’t know if he’ll do any answering.)
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Dear Mr. Dickinson,
I too think your garden looks terrific. I may spend more time studying the photo when my own garden isn’t calling me. Blessed if I can see any mess.
My electric mower has been a joy … so quiet. I have a rechargable as I also have a rather larger lawn (not by choice, but with about an acre there’s a limit to the amount of shrub border, flower bed, veggie garden, garden pool and bog I can manage). My next door neighbors and I share mowers, pump in the brook, garden hose, extension cords and another six acres. Nothing like being under funded for encouraging sharing!
My frogs are mainly quiet, except when mating. Then they are raucous. Later in the summer I expect to hear from the bullfrogs … if they haven’t been driven out by the leopard frogs or eaten by ???
Anyway, I have long loved your YA books, remember well your talk at Children’s Literature New England in Cambridge (U.K.), and even have a small, ratty collection of your mysteries (second hand paperbacks, brought back from Oxfam shops, etc.).
I hope you’ll continue to do the blog now and then, as I do enjoy the interplay. Thank you!
Blessed if I can see any mess.
********* Careful photographer! :) (And no, it WASN’T me.)
I hope you’ll continue to do the blog now and then,
********* yes I hope so too. I’ve been VERY GOOD about not *asking* him but now that he’s done it voluntarily . . . I’ll never let him forget it! :)
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If Peter’s frogs are anything like my Dumpy Frog, they only croak once a week after eating. Since they’re outside it probably doesn’t reverberate like my frog’s does. You wouldn’t think such a small creature would make such a BIG NOISE, but they do.
I envy that pond. I want one, but down here (North Carolina coastal plain) it would fill up with mosquitoes in twenty minutes.
ONCE A WEEK AFTER EATING??? Oh well, different critters, different lifestyles. . . .
Get a fountain. Mosquitos only fill up standing water. :)
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“ONCE A WEEK AFTER EATING??? Oh well, different critters, different lifestyles. . . .”
—– Yes, this has always bemused me about cold-blooded animals. People who come to our zoo are sometimes shocked at how rarely we feed our sharks (only twice a week). Some have the understandable belief that we’re starving them (although if you watch the sharks at feeding time you can see this isn’t the case; they’re definitely interested, but not desperate). It’s hard to believe they need so little food; one of the downsides to having warm blood. Although in the wild often even mammals don’t eat that often, especially carnivores. But still, they would if they could. The cold-blooded animals I’ve seen just aren’t interested, even when we food-obsessed mammals TRY to feed them more often.
(somewhat offtopic) I’ve syndicated your blog on LJ, so that people who were on your old LJ friendslist can keep reading the blog. Their LJ comments don’t show up on your blog, of course, but it simplifies the lives of people who are LJ-only. Tell your LJ friends to add to their friendslists if they are interested.
If this is a breach of your privacy or of copyright, let me know and I’ll take it down. Your blog has what is called an “RSS feed”, which makes your postings available to automatic blog-readers. I think of it as no different from reading your blog’s RSS feed in Google Reader. (Your Webmistress can explain.)
All that said — and again, one word and I shall take it down and apologize — the garden is doing splendidly, although something is @#$@#$ eating the peppers, so I’m having to replant them. The Cox’s Orange Pippin bench-graft now has a shoot 12″ high.
It would be nice if you used a name. . . .
There have been three lj links that I know of. I’m maintaining a low profile I’m afraid.
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Oh, frell. I quite forgot to name myself. Does the low profile mean that you’d like the syndication removed? Will do, if that’s your wish.
On the contrary, I’m hanging out for as many readers as possible. This is all still based on a plan to make my publishers happy.
There’s already an LJ feed: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/robinmckinleys/profile
There was a second, but I believe the person who made it took it down because there was one.
There’s a Playing With Your Food feed, too: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/robins_recipes/profile
I’ve been keeping an eye for comments on the feeds, ready to direct people back here where Robin can see them and moderate.
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Oh, *bless* you. Extra points for jmeadows!! this sort of thing worries me in a useless sort of way because I know how helpless *I* am on the web and so I can easily imagine other helpless people falling afoul and not knowing what to do and heavens know *I* can’t help them and . . .
Jmeadows, actually I made that one. It was meant to be robinmckinleys_blog, but it got truncated.
Okay, cool! I remember seeing all the links about it in the Old Blog, but I couldn’t remember who made it.
Hello Peter
How lovely to have not one but two favourite authors to read here :)
Your garden is beautiful, and I love the different corners, nooks and crannies; newt, frogs and pond are icing on the cake. I’m with you on the gardens NEEDING various potentially vital but currently redundant objects; as soon as you throw said items away they are immediately obviously just the thing you need now this instant, for some project or urgent purpose!
I do think, however that Robin is entitled to her footnotes: not only is it her blog, however reluctantly t was conceived, but surely your post is a riposte to comments in HER previous post? As Blog tender and maintainer, I presume that that gives Robin the right to comment on any comments from others? Haha! There must be some privileges for sweating daily over her computer – this from a computer illiterate sweating over computers herself…
I did *say* to Peter that if I used it I would have a very hard time NOT adding footnotes and he DID SAY he expected footnotes. And yes, it is my blog. I also thought Peter’s post was too SHORT by itself!! It never occurred to me that any of this was going to be, uh, *controversial.*
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Peter surely knows you so well that footnotes are not an issue, rather a certainty; and as a writer of elegant and forceful prose and poetry (me, envious? Mmmm, well… :)) he can absolutely stand up for himself on page or blog,so no need to defend him. It’s just entertaining to read what seemed a straight post and then reread it as a follow-on from yours – I’m imagining your argument again when you scribbled furiously. How hard to stay cross with both of your senses of humour vbg.
Well one does not WANT to stay cross. :) And Peter’s pretty used to me, yes. :)
This is a lovely garden, thank you Peter for the photo. I have lots of grass (well, green areas, as there is a lot of weed infiltration) because we have maybe an acre and a half of civilized yard and my husband doesn’t garden, he mows. (Yes, on a tractor. He likes to ride the tractor. He doesn’t like to weed, plant, etc. etc.) And there’s only so much I can keep up with. The back yard–the fenced area–is dog area and so has no ornamentals at all, what would be the point? But if I ever write “Gardening with Dandelions” I will have LOTS of photos!
As a certified pack rat I completely sympathize with the desire to keep potentially useful stuff. After all, you never know . . .
“But if I ever write “Gardening with Dandelions” I will have LOTS of photos!”
—- I love it! Let me know if you start up on your book; I could contribute a few photos as well! (Although I will admit to LIKING dandelions; they’re such a cheery shade of yellow, and they’re so persistent, which I can’t help but see as a virtue even when one might wish it otherwise. Last year I taught my younger nephew how to “plant dandelions” [he was 2 at the time and had never blown the seeds away before], which of course was a big hit; his father wasn’t very happy with me! [In my defense, I pull them out when they're in the garden, and leave them only in the yard-ish bit, which has plenty of other weeds too but none so pretty as dandelions])
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