From Jos Biggs to give you a smile with your morning coffee.
I like my world to be in harmony, without stress and raised voices.
I don’t want to give the impression that I like my world to be boring and monochrome – there is a wealth of difference between harmony, which allows for a decent measure of excitement, and stress and discord, which doesn’t.
My world has been affected by the recent rain – not that I am complaining about the rain, coming as I do from a country where a week without rain is almost unheard of, even in the height of summer.
I like rain - Spanish rain, that is. It is such an unusual phenomenon that I get quite excited when it rains. I feel compelled to drop everything and watch it, I don’t know what I expect, but you never know, one day it might rain actual cats and dogs!
But it is the consequences of the rain that have jolted my world into disharmony. Everything in our garden is growing at record speed, including those plants which I would rather didn’t grow at all, namely weeds.
I have a broad-minded approach to weeds. In fairness many of them are very pretty, some of them are even quite spectacular, and I feel would be better described as ‘wild flowers.’
So I set a piece of our garden aside for these little treasures, gathering them lovingly and carefully in seed form from the surrounding countryside, but they steadfastly refused to co-operate, and my wild flower garden remained barren.
The weeds, sorry, wild flowers and I have developed a strange, twisted relationship. They refused to grow in their nice specially prepared plot, but grew with gusto in the rest of the garden.
As soon as they popped their heads up I would pounce on them with a maniacal laugh and heave them out by the roots. I felt justified, after all, they had the choice, they could have put themselves in their designated safe area, but oh no, they had to turn up where they weren’t welcome.
But the relationship between the weeds and myself has moved on from absolute enmity – we have formed a sort of pact. It is along the lines of: If they promise to produce a pretty flower, they can stay, as long as they are not
A: Interfering with an existing plant which cost money, and therefore has a superior claim to land rights.
B: Give in gracefully when their flower is over, and accept a dignified end. (I will pull them up when they are no longer pretty)
I think this is a very fair arrangement. However, the weeds (yes, weeds!) continue to grow everywhere!
They know the rules, so why can’t they play fair? Why can’t they Behave?
And furthermore; After it has rained I am left with red mud on all outside surfaces – I’m hoping that after time, a lot of time, this will trickle down earth-wards and I will eventually have something resembling soil in my garden!
