 |
Our Christmas Tree Twin's Gardenias  Rambling roses |
We had Christmas day at Epsom (again) under the Pohutakawa tree. Its the main reason I chipped in to buy the place, though my brothers mostly bought it because it was close to the hospital and are now using it as a makeshift Tram Barn. Every year the Pohutakawa blooms around Christmas along with the Christmas lilies, agapanthus and day lilies, and those straggly red astromerias that we can never remove. They did not put up a Christmas tree indoors, why bother when there's a glorious one already decorated outside?
Vincent's Titanic Gladioli I bought him last year was also in bloom, and there's going to be passionfruit, which had replaced the monster wisteria. This year everyone got hippeastrums (or amarylis) bulbs to plant in the garden, though I was non-plused to learn that Vincent already beat me to it. He also offered the aunties Jasmine climbing plants 'Grand Duke Tuscan' in pots. He'd ordered four of them from Kings Plant Barn and they turned up one morning on our doorstep. Mum missed out on receiving one however because there are five sisters in the family and everyone else got one before she did. Vincent says they don't grow outside, only indoors but where inside has anyone got room?? He's already stuffed the interior of the house with all his antiques and costumes, and kauri tree furniture. I can't count how many dead tree wardrobes he's got full of fur coats (that you can't wear in Auckland).
Brothers! Leyton's only contribution to the garden is to get a boarder in to mow the lawns while he's away working up north. But at least I can say mum and my efforts to spring tidy the place has been rewarded and the garden is looking sharp.
Back home I'm still watering Woodside on Mondays. I took home JoAnnes' asparagus fern plant and it's now hanging in the garage on the only hook that's available. I have this nagging feeling that on the last day of school when I took all the plants down off the ceiling for mum to water she did not actually water them all and I have visions of them collapsing and drying up if there is nobody in school to look after them.
I am still sore about that. But there is nothing I can do. Tinka one of the previous librarians apparently lived right next door to the school and would pop over in the holidays to water and tend her ferns. I'm not even allowed back in. I had to hand in my keys and drive away, not even looking back.
Maybe in ten years time, I may return to find the library has become like Where the Wild Things are, and they actually took up my suggestion for a real tree inside instead of a fake one, where the children can indulge their fantasies of swinging from the branches singing 'In the Jungle, the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonite' or 'Hakuna matata' or that Matariki Macarena song that drives everyone nuts.
Dave Gunson replied to my email notifying him that his cat Mr Muggs is now looking after the library so he organised a parcel of Fancy Feast to be delivered to tide him over otherwise Mr Muggs may resort to eating Pablo the mouse, who lives up in the rafters.
I was not certain what to do with the flax flowers and cuttings bouquet that the deputy Principal had made for me. I decided to put them in the garden because it felt like a part of me had died. Maybe they will grow, who knows. Two 'Alfalfa' purple Gladioli came up the day of the Poroporoaki (farewell hui) for the Principal so I cut them for her and gave away two African violets, but otherwise, like the garden nanny job, it never pays to get too attached to your charges.
The last thing I really wanted to do was - go play on the playground, but mum was there and I had to take her home. In the four years I had been at the school I had never set foot on the playground, I was like some straggly wallflower who never got asked to dance, nobody ever thought the librarian was allowed outside of the library, go on the roundabout thingy and spin until she was dizzy.
I also thought about singing a farewell song, Alanis Morrisette's You Learn immediately came to mind. But then I remembered she sang 'I recommend...walking around naked in your living room' so I thought...hmm better not.
