Pansies
Oh, stop that.* It’s not midnight yet.** It’s not.*** It can’t be midnight†, I’m still eating dinner.†† Um . . .
So I had Computer Men underfoot most of the day again today††† doing inscrutable clicky Computer Men things, and . . . my email now semi-works to a whole new unsettling schedule. Am I now getting all my email? I have no frelling idea. I’ve had less than usual the last two days but . . . sometimes you do just get less than usual.‡
Because I am also at present without a car‡‡ hellhounds and I are racking up the necessary daily miles commuting to and from the mews by various roundabout ways, and we were slightly late getting back this morning and discovered Computer Men draped over the flowerpots at the cottage. We were slightly late because . . . siiiiiigh. One of our two main routes from the cottage goes through the churchyard. It’s a very frisky churchyard, with lots of well-tended graves and floral offerings.‡‡‡ The floral offerings are the problem. I hate the tradition of laying cut flowers on a grave, where they wither in a few hours—bring a cheap jug, guys, and put them in water! I suppose the dead-flowers convention may be the transient cut-price modern version of those very grand tombs with really icky skeletons taking the place of the dearly beloved: all flesh, animal and vegetable, is grass.§ Bah. But I grit my teeth and pass those by.
The ones that give me the miseries are the live plants brought optimistically in pots and then . . . left to flop and die of thirst. ARRRRGH. I don’t like it, but I can at least sort of understand a non-plant person buying a pre-potted thingummy at the florist’s, and leaving it instead of the bouquet of cut flowers, with, I suppose, the vague idea that they’ll last longer. Well, they will, of course, but they’ll last longer yet if you WATER THEM.
And even then . . . someone coming from a distance, okay, they buy something at the florist’s, bring it along, leave it, and go home. It lasts a few days and croaks. C’est la vie. Or la morte. I still don’t like it—and it seems to me all wrong to kill plants as a way of honouring a dead human—but I can see it. Sort of.
But what about the obviously home-made offerings? The lopsided pansies in the plastic planter? You make the thing up with your own fair hands . . . and you still leave it mercilessly at the graveside to struggle, gasp, collapse and perish? Why not keep it at home, water it, and pretend that it’s at your beloved’s graveside? Your beloved is dead. They’re not going to care. And you’ll have some nice bright flowers to cheer you up.
Anyway. Watching ranks of little green things dying in the graveyard depresses me. And we’ve had no rain to speak of for weeks, so there have been more than usual numbers of little ex-green things dying in the graveyard lately. And—speaking of home-made efforts—there’s a rectangular plastic planter with five or six pansies in it sitting sadly at the edge of the path the hellhounds and I follow. I’ve been watching them go through the struggle-gasp-collapse-perish business. About three days ago I noticed a watering can half hidden behind one of the old tombstones and my nerve broke. I seized the can, found a tap and (shadowed by baffled hellhounds) watered the frelling pansies . . . knowing that it was too late. They’d been dead for two or three days by then.
No. Wrong. When hellhounds and I passed by again six or eight hours later there were signs of lumpiness—of some prostrate stems trying to stand up again. I still thought it was probably too late . . . but by next day they were all standing. They looked a little beat up, but they were all clearly alive. They’re even hopefully producing a few new buds. Tough little mothers, pansies. One of my favourite flowers.
So I was late back to the cottage today to let Computer Men in because hellhounds and I came through the churchyard . . . and my pansies needed a drink. And as long as I had to go re-steal the watering can and stand at the tap, I might as well fill the watering can and water a few of my pansies’ neighbours.
What worries me is that the careless leavers of potted plants at graveside will decide that this is the work of the garden fairies, and feel free to leave more little green things and more frequently. And I suppose it would be bad form to take them home. . . .
* * *
* Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! . . .
** Bing! Bing! . . .
*** Bing! Bing! Bing! . . .
† Bing! Bing!
†† This might have something to do with going bell ringing tonight. Colin is responsible for two towers, and one of them is farther away than the other one. It was the farther-away one tonight. I’ve been cramming Cambridge, of course, so first we had a frelling touch of frelling Stedman, where he called another frelling single nearly every (frelling) stroke—one of Stedman’s peculiarities is that you can call almost anywhere: most methods you can only call with reference to the treble leading. But then Stedman is a principle, not a method, and the treble is no different than any other bell. Which is why the conductor saying, Catch hold for a touch of Stedman! has a somewhat paralyzing effect. So, the adrenaline flowing nicely, he called for Kent. Kent! I haven’t rung Kent in months. Now, true, I was just thinking that I’m going to lose Kent, not that I ever exactly had it, by stomping it out with Cambridge—but they’re a bit diabolical to ring together when you’re at the frantic-mugging-up level, as I am—they’re too nearly almost a little bit alike. However, as I am fond of saying: nobody died.
††† Although I’m pretty sure I caught Gabriel playing Angry Birds^ on his iPhone. He was waiting for something to load or something. Sure he was. I am going to be in so much trouble as soon as I get my iPhone.
^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNNzRyd1xz0 When I was playing with Raphael’s iPhone the other day and going ‘ooh, ah’ over the number of aps, he took it away from me for a minute, saying, nah, most of them are games, and then handed it back to me with Angry Birds loaded. Here, try this one, he said. My two-year-old loves it.
Hmmmm . . .
‡ And if I could train it to block all emails inquiring after a sequel to SUNSHINE it might be worth a little unreliability elsewhere.
‡‡ Wolfgang went in for a General Service + Make the Banshees in the Steering Go Away and Stay Away this Time + Bring the Passenger Door Lock Out of Its Rather Belated Winter Hibernation and Convince It This is May and Warm and That Being Permanently Frozen Is Old and Boring. He was supposed to come out again this afternoon. No. Tomorrow afternoon, maybe. I can’t decide what level of bad news this is. At least they’re finding something to fix. But when you start taking 15-year-old cars in for mending you start wondering what percentage of the price of a new car you’re going to be paying when you get them out again.
‡‡‡ And the occasional small ceramic dog or cat, most of which are dire and one or two are pretty cute.
§ There’s one at the local cathedral that’s for a bishop or someone similarly resplendent with all the struts and carved screens and stone draperies and things, and the requisite skeleton lying over the actual tomb. With a bit of stone drapery over its nether regions. It’s a skeleton. But it still needs its (departed) privates protected from the lurid gaze of the hoi polloi.
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