Mum was in a rage this morning and threatened to rip out my fruit salad plant, which I had moved to closer to the camellia near the stormwater drain. She also didn't like that I had put pots that collected water or the birdbaths in the garden, saying they were breeding grounds for mosquitos. I have yet to see any mosquitoes anywhere. The birdbaths are for bees and butterflies. They need drinks too. However she was furious and could not be reasoned with.
I biked to Woodside where I could garden in peace. I have had it with control freaks who dictate what you can or cannot do in a garden.
Then I realised I had the church flowers to do tomorrow but no flowers. I had decided on giant cyclamen in pots so those were what I bought..seeing there were no big blooms to be had in my own garden.
It is never a good thing to go shopping on a Saturday - the stores now have their Mother's Day campaigns everywhere. Aside from me NOT being a Mother and having it rubbed in my face I was born on Mother's Day and thus my own birthday gets subsumed by my mother. I just don't feel the whole Mother's Day thing anymore. If I go to church I am reminded that my own mother could not care to go with me, and everyone else's mother is feted and praised for doing motherly things but my mother wouldn't kiss or hug me with a barge pole.
Of course not being the perfect daughter is a crime. Perhaps I cried too much as a baby. I can picture it, me crying in my cot and feeling vulnerable and alone, and my mother sick and tired of it and wanting me to shut up. I have a distinct memory of being abandoned in the dark and being totally ignored for hours. Cut to present day - I don't think much has changed, I'm still the nuisance daughter who is not perfect, and had the gall to be sickly, weak and not a boy. I think it's a Chinese thing. If you not Chinese you may not understand.
Why they have no daughter's day I don't know. Anyway.
I was asked while I was out shopping what I was doing by someone I hadn't seen in ages behind the counter of the Manna Christian Bookstore. I should have said 'shopping'. But I decided to give a new answer this time and that was in answer to what do you do, I said 'gardening'. But before I can talk about the wonders of gardening, this person assumed I garden for other people and was interested in me to because her own garden was 'out of control'. I paused, thinking, OK, is she hinting she wants a gardener to come and do her garden...and will she pay me or expect me to do it for nothing? But before I could come up with an improvised business card, she had moved on to the next customer.
I ended up going home confused. What is the right answer to 'what do you do?'. Do I become a walking salesperson for my gardening skills and set up gardening deals for time poor people saying how much I charge? Or did she just want advice. Because I have good advice - close the shop, quit working in the weekends and get stuck into your own garden and then you won't need to pay others to do it.
I am going to have a nap.
