Gazing out of the window, at a sneaky new fall of night-time snow, I am reminded of buttercups and daisies. Which doesn't make much sense, I know - except of course that on parting the curtains, I was expecting to see the clear streets of yesterday, with their promise of Spring.
Fickle weather. But never mind, I can still dream of buttercups and daisies - which reminds me of a hymn we used to sing in our amazingly high young voices, at Sunday School:
"Daisies are our si-il-ver, buttercups our gooold..."
Free riches.
Which puts me in mind of Church for some reason. Probably because that is where the grown-ups would disappear to after dumping us at SS - and most of them (the grown-ups) were not rich at all. Which reminds me of that saying: 'As poor as a church mouse'....
Why is a church mouse considered to be poor? Seems to me it has quite an affluent existence, in a mostly quiet (except on Sundays) dry place, with access to an abundance of alter flowers, wafer crumbs and drops of spilled wine. Seems to me, a church mouse would be partying day and night!
Still, mice are not a popular animal. Which by a huge leap of the imagination reminds me of a 'school boy howler':
Teacher: I want you to write an essay on the House of Lords.
School boy (writing industriously): In the H of L's the men are called Peers, because they peer about a lot. And they wear cornets on their heads and their robes are trimmed with vermin...
Which reminds me of a Dutch song:
I saw a mouse (warble).
Where?
There! There on the stair - right there... A little mouse with clogs on..
Well I declare!
Going clip-clippity clop, on the staair! Oh yeah..!"
Which puts me in mind of another Dutch song about 'Tulips in Amsterdam'. Which makes me think of Spring.........and buttercups and daisies...
........and that infernal snow!
Which makes me think of 'whiskers on kittens and bright woolen mittens....tra-la'!!
'And they're coming to take me away, ha-ha-hee-hee, to the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their nice white coats and they're coming to take me awaaay heyhey!'
Did I mention that it was Sunday?
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Jan 24, 2010
Dec 18, 2008
DOCTOR WHO, WHAT, WHERE?
What is going on across the road I wonder…?
Awoken abruptly from restless slumber at 7.30 a.m., to the jarring thunder of heavy trucks beeping backwards and forwards just meters from my windows – and then just as suddenly they were gone again - and there it is.
What is it?
But as the sky lightens, all is revealed. It is the Time Lord himself, in his flying loo! Quite obviously the Tardis is in for a refit - and this is the good Doctor’s brilliant compromise: A pre Christmas Day shopping visit to The Netherlands, in a flying Water Closet (in ‘loo’ of his planned appearance on British Christmas Day prime time telly! Ha ha)!
Makes sense to moi. But then, I’m on strong medication.
On second thoughts, that heap of dirt just visible next to the object, could well be the first tentative step by Dutch authorities to construct The Neth’s first mountain… Wow!
Dykes we have - ahem, in all shapes and sizes – but no mountains – and this W.C. cubicle is intended to accommodate the floods of tourists, shortly to ascend and plant flags on this newest world wonder!
Oh Glory. I could open a snack bar hatch in my panoramic window – and become famous for green sludge lentil Omega Brain Revitalizing soup! There’s still a batch in the freezer, left over from July: (Ref. posting July 1, 2008. 'Omega Oh My!').
However – and more sobering - the sudden appearance of an army of workmen armed with spades and fluorescent orange coats, also suggests that the local ‘Bods That Be’, have finally decided to landscape the large muddy area between two recently renovated blocks of flats.
A week before Christmas? Ach! (Derisive dutch throat clearing sound).
Think I’ll crawl back into bed. You never know, the camera might have lied (still learning how to upload it) and this might just be another drug induced dream, from which I’ll awaken in an hour or two to the aroma of scrambled eggs, toast and coffee, prepared by Russell Crowe (or Johnny Depp), in a plastic pinny!
Jul 6, 2008
HORSE MANURE!
I am standing outside my front door chatting to a neighbour, when the clatter of horses’ hooves draws our attention to two magnificent police horses turning into our street. Whether by accident or design the horses are a matching sandy brown and their riders sit high and haughty in the saddles, resplendent in their blue police uniforms.
‘Now that’s a fine sight…’ I begin, but as they draw abreast of us the nearest horse is obviously agitated, tossing his head and rolling a baleful eye.
‘He’s gonna crap!’ Yells my neighbour’s young son, jumping up and down with glee - and sure enough as the horse strolls past, he lets fly with endless dollops of thick, smelly yellow manure.
My neighbour clicks her tongue in disgust and shooing her delighted progeny before her, picks her way through the piles of steaming poo to their house across the road, leaving me staring after the horses. In my mind I am five years old again and back in England at my grandparent’s house. The coal man’s horse has just passed by and the cry has gone out: Horse muck! Horse muck! And at every house in the immediate vicinity, kids are scrambling to grab buckets and spades and be the first to collect the inevitable booty left by this hard working animal.
‘Just what my roses need.’ Laughs granddad, egging my cousin and I on.
‘A penny each for a bucketful!’
As the youngest by two years, I would hold the bucket, while my cousin shovelled frantically. The kids who lived next door were about our ages and competition was fierce! Still, there always seemed enough to go round and my cousin and I would struggle back to granddad with our bucket of steaming bounty, to collect our reward. A penny in those days would fill the whole of a child’s palm and I would stare down at my huge, hard earned copper coin with satisfaction. A sherbet dab, pink sugar mouse, gobstopper, thin chocolate bar wrapped in tin foil… the mouth-watering treats this coin would buy were endless!
A passing car jerks me from my reverie. There are still no children anywhere to be seen and my neighbour across the road is calling me over for a cup of tea. As we sit in her back garden my eyes are drawn to a bag of fertilizer pellets standing next to her rose bushes. Clean, efficient, no pungent odour… and the only bucket and spade to be seen are the brightly coloured plastic ones in her child’s sandpit.
As I return home the horse manure is still there but almost completely flattened and crisscrossed with the tire treads of passing cars. But all is not wasted – a couple of magpies are pecking animatedly in the remains.
‘Ah well’, I mutter. ‘Peck away. After the street sweeper car has been tomorrow there will be no trace of it at all. That’s progress for you; a clean and sanitized world – but not half as much fun!’
‘Now that’s a fine sight…’ I begin, but as they draw abreast of us the nearest horse is obviously agitated, tossing his head and rolling a baleful eye.
‘He’s gonna crap!’ Yells my neighbour’s young son, jumping up and down with glee - and sure enough as the horse strolls past, he lets fly with endless dollops of thick, smelly yellow manure.
My neighbour clicks her tongue in disgust and shooing her delighted progeny before her, picks her way through the piles of steaming poo to their house across the road, leaving me staring after the horses. In my mind I am five years old again and back in England at my grandparent’s house. The coal man’s horse has just passed by and the cry has gone out: Horse muck! Horse muck! And at every house in the immediate vicinity, kids are scrambling to grab buckets and spades and be the first to collect the inevitable booty left by this hard working animal.
‘Just what my roses need.’ Laughs granddad, egging my cousin and I on.
‘A penny each for a bucketful!’
As the youngest by two years, I would hold the bucket, while my cousin shovelled frantically. The kids who lived next door were about our ages and competition was fierce! Still, there always seemed enough to go round and my cousin and I would struggle back to granddad with our bucket of steaming bounty, to collect our reward. A penny in those days would fill the whole of a child’s palm and I would stare down at my huge, hard earned copper coin with satisfaction. A sherbet dab, pink sugar mouse, gobstopper, thin chocolate bar wrapped in tin foil… the mouth-watering treats this coin would buy were endless!
A passing car jerks me from my reverie. There are still no children anywhere to be seen and my neighbour across the road is calling me over for a cup of tea. As we sit in her back garden my eyes are drawn to a bag of fertilizer pellets standing next to her rose bushes. Clean, efficient, no pungent odour… and the only bucket and spade to be seen are the brightly coloured plastic ones in her child’s sandpit.
As I return home the horse manure is still there but almost completely flattened and crisscrossed with the tire treads of passing cars. But all is not wasted – a couple of magpies are pecking animatedly in the remains.
‘Ah well’, I mutter. ‘Peck away. After the street sweeper car has been tomorrow there will be no trace of it at all. That’s progress for you; a clean and sanitized world – but not half as much fun!’
Jun 29, 2008
A MOTH THAT MATTERS
Insects are not a life force I usually think much about, except when swatting a pesky fly or trying to eradicate a plague of ants from the larder. But since last night, after transferring a particularly large moth from the kitchen ceiling into a glass and releasing it into the night, I have been thinking about some particular kinds of insects a lot - and wondering where on earth they are…!
It has suddenly dawned on me that I have not seen a wasp for at least eight years. There was a time that it was impossible to sit in the garden or on a restaurant terrace during summertime, without being besieged by aggressive, black and yellow would-be assassins. So where are they now? Is it just my own city corner of the planet that they (seem to) have disappeared from? Not that I miss them (!) having been chased and painfully stung by them on a number of occasions – but where are they all?
Come to think of it, I have not seen a sparrow for years either. I can remember a time when flocks of sparrows would swoop down into my garden in Amsterdam at least twice a day during the 1990s. Then almost overnight or so it seemed, they stopped coming and were replaced by blackbirds and magpies. I have recently moved to another major city but it is the same story here too.
Did/do sparrows eat wasps? Has the disappearance of one caused the disappearance of the other? And what about bees? I know that the world is mystified by the disappearance of whole hives of bees and that this phenomenon presents a potentially catastrophic problem for agriculture: i.e., no bees, no pollination. Bats too, seem to be disappearing in their millions… Perhaps all the communication satellites circling our globe are disrupting bats’ sonar (?) It is all very strange…
As ‘my’ moth flew away last night, I watched her go and worried. A quadrangle of newly renovated flats across the way lit up the surrounding area with dozens of gallery lights - and to a little disorientated moth it must have looked like the moon. Shivering, even though the night was warm, I hoped fervently that she would turn and fly the other way, towards the darkened park, with its many bushes and trees and sleeping flowers…. I hoped she would hear the call of her own kind and meet a friend and thoroughly enjoy her short life!
I have never hoped for anything for a moth before, except perhaps (for both of us) that it not fly into my hair (!) but as I sit and gaze out of my window today, onto a predominance of concrete technology and bustling humanity – the survival and happiness of that one small lost moth, suddenly seems like one of the most important things in the world.
It has suddenly dawned on me that I have not seen a wasp for at least eight years. There was a time that it was impossible to sit in the garden or on a restaurant terrace during summertime, without being besieged by aggressive, black and yellow would-be assassins. So where are they now? Is it just my own city corner of the planet that they (seem to) have disappeared from? Not that I miss them (!) having been chased and painfully stung by them on a number of occasions – but where are they all?
Come to think of it, I have not seen a sparrow for years either. I can remember a time when flocks of sparrows would swoop down into my garden in Amsterdam at least twice a day during the 1990s. Then almost overnight or so it seemed, they stopped coming and were replaced by blackbirds and magpies. I have recently moved to another major city but it is the same story here too.
Did/do sparrows eat wasps? Has the disappearance of one caused the disappearance of the other? And what about bees? I know that the world is mystified by the disappearance of whole hives of bees and that this phenomenon presents a potentially catastrophic problem for agriculture: i.e., no bees, no pollination. Bats too, seem to be disappearing in their millions… Perhaps all the communication satellites circling our globe are disrupting bats’ sonar (?) It is all very strange…
As ‘my’ moth flew away last night, I watched her go and worried. A quadrangle of newly renovated flats across the way lit up the surrounding area with dozens of gallery lights - and to a little disorientated moth it must have looked like the moon. Shivering, even though the night was warm, I hoped fervently that she would turn and fly the other way, towards the darkened park, with its many bushes and trees and sleeping flowers…. I hoped she would hear the call of her own kind and meet a friend and thoroughly enjoy her short life!
I have never hoped for anything for a moth before, except perhaps (for both of us) that it not fly into my hair (!) but as I sit and gaze out of my window today, onto a predominance of concrete technology and bustling humanity – the survival and happiness of that one small lost moth, suddenly seems like one of the most important things in the world.
Jun 13, 2008
SLUGGED!
I cannot kill a slug. Once by accident, I rode over a particularly fat and juicy one that squelched out into a revolting gooey mess all over the front tyre of my bike and for the life of me and I don’t know why, I felt like a cold blooded killer! Cold and green, like the slug’s remains.
I know it is probably downright loony to feel guilty about committing slugicide - but I can’t help it. Just moments before that particular slug ended up on my tyre, it had been a slug someone. A slug of substance, with an evolutionary line dating back to primeval crud. A slug with family and connections all over the world. In fact at my last 'gound floor flat with garden out back', most of its relations seemed to live there, in the garden - demolishing plants and wolfing the cats’ food and leaving slimey trails – but if you are a slug, it’s what you do. It’s your job.
So, to atone for my earlier crime, I became a slug crusader. You have probably noticed that touching a slug will cause it to draw in its little antlers and curl up into a sticky, gungy lump and so every time I found one, I would pick it up with newspaper, to prevent ten minutes of yukky finger dee-slime-ing…! Then, after pottering around the garden and collecting a plant pot full of slugs, I would re-house them to the long grass by the canal at the end of the road. A harmless pastime that amused the local kids, causing them to trail after me chanting:
‘Slugs! Slugs! Eeouw, slugs!’
Yes indeed, I was and on occasion still am - ‘Slug Woman’!!
I even wrote a poem about slugs once:
Having no perception of up and down,
Of space and distance and light,
When the rock was moved,
The slug rolled out
And promptly died of fright!
Unless of course they get ‘slugged’ by a bike first, then they get put on a blog…. ‘A blogged slug, a slogged blug’ – say that fast! Oops. Now there’s spit all over the computer screen. Ah but that’s pretty! Lots of rainbow lights shining through the droplets…wonderful! Go on, try it…
Uhhhhh - I must get a life…
Jun 9, 2008
UP THE GARDEN PATH
I know for a fact, having recently lived there, that many of the apartment blocks in Amsterdam hide glorious secret gardens!
Often assessable only through the ground floor apartments to which they belong the effect is of a tranquil and colourful oasis, hidden away from the dinginess and turmoil of city life.
Each rainy day in spring our modest lawns would be teeming with frogs – though lord knows where they came from, while bees, butterflies, snails and slugs went forth and multiplied. Blackbirds and blue tits abounded too, whilst the tallest trees were often filled with screeching families of wild green city parrots, who liked nothing better than to bombard us with twigs and poo (!)
So with all this natural beauty to keep us busy, it was with some surprise that one bright summer morning I discovered my seventy-six year old neighbour Mrs. V., halfway under a hortensia bush, feeding a dish of strawberry yogurt to her scrubbing brush….
Mrs. V: ‘Tch… It wont drink it…. do you think it’s ill?’
Often assessable only through the ground floor apartments to which they belong the effect is of a tranquil and colourful oasis, hidden away from the dinginess and turmoil of city life.
Each rainy day in spring our modest lawns would be teeming with frogs – though lord knows where they came from, while bees, butterflies, snails and slugs went forth and multiplied. Blackbirds and blue tits abounded too, whilst the tallest trees were often filled with screeching families of wild green city parrots, who liked nothing better than to bombard us with twigs and poo (!)
So with all this natural beauty to keep us busy, it was with some surprise that one bright summer morning I discovered my seventy-six year old neighbour Mrs. V., halfway under a hortensia bush, feeding a dish of strawberry yogurt to her scrubbing brush….
Mrs. V: ‘Tch… It wont drink it…. do you think it’s ill?’
Me: ‘ Oh definitely.’
Mrs. V: ‘I don’t know. It’s unheard of to find one of these here. I mean how did it get here? Do you think it's dead?'
Me: ‘Indubitably.’
Mrs. V: Blinking and frowning. ‘You don’t seem bothered. I thought you liked hedgehogs?'
Me: ‘Well like you said - it’s dead… Oh Mrs. V., I am sorry but… you know that cataract operation you are due to have next week?'
Mrs. V: ‘Yes.’
Me: ‘And you know that scrubbing brush you lost last year and that is now half rotten and buried in the dirt under your hortensia bush?'
Mrs. V: Brightly. ‘Is it? Oh good, I wondered where… that… had… got … to… WEL NU BEN IK VAN DE POT GERUKT!’
Which means something like: ‘Well now I’ve gone completely off my rocker!’ The Dutch aren't known for spicy swear words.
P.S. We threw the scrubbing brush in the bin. A-men.
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