NOVEMBER BLOG
Gosh, is it really all those months since I last posted anything on this blog site? Actually, it’s not that I haven’t actually written anything, the medieval glossary has been expanded to take in Macer’s herbal. It’s a vast amount of work because each of his hundred odd plant names has had to be checked for his sources (usually Pliny or Dioscorides) and his plant identities verified against those of both his contemporaries and modern taxonomy. Anyway, if you want a copy send me an e-mail. And no, don’t bother writing to tell me that Macer wasn’t Macer, I already know that, thanks
Then there was the report on Sicily for the RHS (referred to in a previous blog). They originally wanted about 3000 words and got 66,000 but then asked for some modern photographs and a commentary. It was time-consuming but a lot of fun to do. I must admit that I enjoy rummaging around in the baggage that gardening and more particularly, herbalism has accreted over the centuries. Showing that the influence of Sicily compared with that of Chrétien de Troyes, on the great medieval garden at Hesdin was minimal, is really going to get up the noses of all the three or four people in the world who give a toss about such things. But once people have got a “popular” bee in their bonnets, no matter how idiotic such as the-Romans-used-lavender-as-a-cosmetic one, there is nothing that is going to change their minds and they will go on writing books and posting things on their web sites regardless of the total absence of evidence to support their dogmatic assertions.
After that, my brain decided that it was becoming a touch fed up and so I wrote a somewhat “noirish” fairy story for the grand children. My daughter had accused me of telling her horror stories when she was little and asked me to do some for her own children. If they ever get past the politically correct susceptibilities of my agent, they will probably enjoy a far greater currency in the outside world than the academic slaughter of a few turgid sacred cows.
Meanwhile in the journal of the Mediterranean Garden Society, Caroline Harbouri asked whether anyone could name any villainous gardeners in fiction. Well, can you? It really is extraordinary difficult. The obvious candidate is Beatrix Potter’s Mr McGregor and I have to confess shame-facedly, that I never thought of him myself.
Has anyone else noticed that seeds are ripening a month later this year because of the foul weather? It’s the sort of thing that the BBC puts on its lunch time news when it can’t think of anything else to say. In fact because the idea of a cold, wet autumn conflicts with its monotonous nanny-state, politically-correct obsession with “global warming”, it probably hasn’t been as tedious about this as it is about most meteorological phenomena. Read into it what you may, we have had pasque flowers blooming in September, cowslips at the end of October and now primroses. I know I am against the BBC, Gordon Brown and the massed ranks of greenies on this, but I don’t blame my dirty old van, the fact that I flew in an aeroplane last April nor that I once forgot to turn off the light in the downstairs loo last month for the fact that my plants don’t know what season it is. We all get confused, moreover whilst I am as aware, if not more aware than a lot of politicians by reason of my job, of climate change, I feel it would be extremely presumptuous of me to blame myself. The way to stop this nonsense at a stroke would be to stop people breeding, but since this would ultimately be prejudicial to all our pensions, no politician and least of all myself, is going to propose it as a solution until it’s too late so we are stuck with a lot of stop-gap tokenism instead of a proper solution. All of which has diverted me from saying that, yes, seed collecting is still going full swing even as the November frosts chill our bones and whop up the electricity bills. Anyway I was just going out with my bucket to collect the Umbellularia seeds when the phone rang. So I answered the thing, any possibility of a customer, however fleeting at this time of the year, has to be pounced upon with enthusiasm and avidity. Fat chance. It was some bloke asking if I had fifteen minutes to answer some questions about the service provided by Lloyds Bank. Now I don’t suppose I am the only person on earth who dreads ringing Lloyds Bank more than any other phone call they are compelled to make, except perhaps Norwich Union insurance. We have all gone through a genealogical tree of pressing buttons to be asked by a robot with an incomprehensible ethnic accent to press another number before being cut off just when we imagine the goal to be in sight. So having told him all this, which he gave the impression of having heard a thousand times already that morning, I pointed out how much the bank charges for writing a letter and suggesting that if he wanted 15 minutes of my time, they should pay a compliance fee and stop whingeing about my overdraft. And then I went back to my seed collecting.
The RHS is trying to double its membership and has launched a major initiative to recruit younger gardeners. I know this is civil-service speak, but you will catch my drift. Obviously, it’s A Good Thing. The younger generation, as we’re always being told, are the gardeners (ie our customers) of the future and the only thing that stands between us and the burning out of the planet (or, if you take the view expressed in the penultimate paragraph above, the sole cause of the burning out of the planet). Anyway having sat on one national and one local horticultural education committee, I have to say that I have no problems with children. Certainly, kids get bored out of their minds by adult interests and adult questions but if you can get them on their own, they’re fine. And that’s the first problem, get them on their own individually and you risk being accused of all manner of horrors, but nevertheless if you grab a bunch, you will find that they are totally ignorant of, but fascinated by all things green especially those that wiggle. Once they can be persuaded to actually put a leaf in their mouths, they sometimes realise they actually enjoy flavours and textures to which they had never previously been exposed. No, the problem is their wretched parents, the yummy mummys who have never learnt to say “NO” to their little darlings, who let their children romp heedlessly around the nursery secure in the knowledge that if anything happens to them, they can sue for massive compensation, backed by the dread department of elf’nsafety. However, even if the parents are happy in their complacency, irresponsibility and stupidity, any insurance claim would certainly result in the nursery losing its public liability cover and would be closed down on the spot. It follows then that I can not answer parents’ questions whilst simultaneously keeping an eye on their unwittingly suicidal children for them. In spite of a great big notice at the entrance telling parents that because of toxic plants and dangerous machinery, they must keep their children within arms reach at all times, I have had parents exhorting their children to eat unidentified leaves and escaped children rocking 47 kg gas cylinders, which would pancake them if they succeeded in pushing them over. Then we had one mother who so appalled the staff and myself by trying to get her children to sample all the plants on the nursery that we unintentionally convinced her that it was essential to make an advance booking at the local undertakers prior to approaching anything with leaves. The girls and I have managed to rear seven kids between us and haven’t lost any yet, but we have begun to wonder at the secret of our success. It seems a bit arrogant to say it’s all down to common sense, but can anyone come up with a better answer? Like I say, one doesn’t have to be a charismatic teacher to get through to kids, but the two essentials are firstly to grab and hold their interest and secondly to set firm guidelines as to what they can and can not do, (they are so surprised by this that they almost invariably comply) the alternative may literally prove fatal.