I'm back at school (again). Aren't I too old to go back to school? Though I claim you can never be too old for school. I think about all the people who had to leave school at 14 and get jobs, which they mostly have lost now anyway. Why leave school at all? Get a job at school, it's a self-perpetuating thing. There's always something to do or learn at school. Plus, you do get paid in the holidays after all!
One thing I had to go back for was my wilting spider plants. I gave them a good water, though it might take them a while to perk up, the hoya and the mother in law tongue were still the same as if I had never been away.
Then near the end of the day as I'd parked my car by the school hall I decided to take some cuttings of lychnis that were going to seed, to see if they might take in my corner bed where it's dry as a bone. I know gardening isn't technically in my librarian job description, but I'm sure a bit of weeding and cutting (or culling) now and again applies to books as well as plants. And books WERE plants before they were ever books. Tree plants.
I wonder if I should start a paper-making industry at school? Whenever I read 'How A Book Is Made' I am sure some of the children had never considered where books made of paper came from. (Answer - mostly sustainable forests in Canada).
A sunflower forest is surely growing down at Woodside. Jacqui is desperate for water bearers and slaves to help out in the garden. But thing is, I'm already being hounded morning and evening to water my own garden and mum's bitter melons under pain of death.
'The plants are drying and are going to die if you don't water them!' Says mum. But it sounds more dramatic in Cantonese. It sounds like I will die too if I don't do as she says. Or, I will be labelled a plant murderer. 'Call yourself a gardener' as she does a massive guilt trip.
I haven't actually been on a real guilt trip before. Maybe a guilt trip is one your sister who runs away from home does, after mum begs her to come back and stay - implying she will die or never see her again if she doesn't. I thought with Covid-19, travel restrictions, all guilt trips had ceased. Ergo, I don't have to go anywhere thanks, because I just can't. Sorry.
Why do we do things we don't really want to do? I've stopped doing that. I'll just say I don't want to do it.
Mum thinks this is an excuse, but I just think it's a reasonable answer. When asked about watering the Woodside plants she will say I only want to do things when I feel like it. I decided well said mum, so I can do that too. Next time I'll probably turn into mum and say to her 'Have you watered the plants? They are gonna die!' and she will have turned into my slave, by mother-daughter vicious cycle teaching.
Terri, it seems is her own boss and slave driving herself in her garden. Last time I contacted her she was cementing and bricklaying in the hot sun, making the rod for her back another cast for her ankle. I thought this is madness, but then I think, we just live in a fallen world, and are just spending out lifetimes picking up the pieces, patching things up, trying, little by little to make the world a better place.
Ah summer. I suppose if it really did rain people would just complain about the humidity and how their plants are taking over the house. I don't know what else to say. I'm more of a go with the flow type person.
Dad took this pic of a late Christmas lily. Gorgeous. Now someone with a controlling type A personality would be complaining 'it's too late for Christmas, silly plant should have flowered on time' and forced it to flower earlier. But I'm like you know what? Everything is beautiful in it's own time. Better late than never.
