Walking The Dog

Daffodil as hairbrush. And daffodil as towel. Yes, I promise I haven't lost the plot. Nor have I dug myself a pit of delusion, dreams and madness and jumped in. No, really, I haven't. Not yet. The daffodil is a thing of beauty - a yellow, trumpety flower on a long, thin stem, that bounces as it nods in the garden breeze. No part of it is bristly. No part could separate hairs in a manner necessary to serve as a conventional hairbrush. It is altogether too bendy and soft. It also lacks the absorbancy generally expected of towels. So  daffodil as hairbrush and towel ? - two impossibles that together go nowhere close to making one sound less implausible than the other. But that is my title. And this is how implausible became plausible. It is all the fault of Four-legged-friend. Or of me. As I supplied both weapon and water. Shortly afterwards, one less-stinky, happy and very wet dog was in need of a towel. Towels don't grow in gardens.  But un-mo

Isn't that an oxymoron? How can one be both positive and pessimistic? Here's how - as illustrated in three simple scenarios: gardening, children and dreams. Gardening When life throws you weeds, and the weeds grow more prolific with each despairing blink of your gardener's eye, and the gardener groans when hoisting upright after an afternoon spent, trowel in hand, bent-over in a choked flower bed, and the sun shines, burning the winter-tender skin at the back of the gardener's neck, and the gardener feels that inexorable train of at-first-creeping-then-later-racing resignation that the bloomin' weeds will win again - this year, like last year, like next year, then it is good to shove the pessimism down the nearest mole hole along with a fresh stinking emission from one of the dogs and stand back to reflect on what is positive. Things might look bad on the I-wish-I-had-a-garden-I-could-be-proud-of front and the there's-never-enough-time-in-the-day front

Birthday celebrations in Spring. Life is yellow. And the birthday boy is 245 years old. "My heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils." ... what me! Dancing? With flowers! I don't think so ... Like the 'ducks dabbling up-tials all', 'wandering lonely as a cloud' is a treasured verse from childhood. I wish I remembered more. Happy Birthday William Wordsworth. Apart from the flowers my favourite part of Spring is the light - crisp, clear, vastly distant. Casting low, long shadows and blinding you in the car at the beginning and end of the day (that bit I don't love, very definitely don't love.) Spring is also the one time of year when gardeners have the opportunity to beat back the rising tide of   emerging seeds, the first winding thready tendrils of bindweed, the low furry haze of nettle carpet and the first yellow heads of buttercup that scream catch-me-if-you-can. Lose the battle now and the weeds win