Four days into the New Year, but I don’t think that it’s too late to wish each and everyone of you the happiest of New Years. Our visitors have departed and we are settling down to something approaching normality, even to the point of seeing the rain pounding down at the time of writing. However, all appears well with the world, bedraggled as it is. As always when I have an enforced rest I get out my metaphorical palette, and wonder just how I can improve the vision. We are all like this. It’s all to do with manipulating form and texture in the garden.
For example, whether it is to give the garden a charge of energy by introducing more scarlet and orange into it, or by giving a shot of tranquilizer by introducing a bit more satin, velvet, or cottonwool into the scheme of things; to go for contrasts or harmony, for spikes and spires or graceful arching forms. I have been thinking about all of these things over the extended holiday, as well as completing my annual inventory of flowering plants in the garden at Christmas time. There were over three dozen plants in flower on Christmas Day, which is about par for the course. What I have done for scores of years is to build up a comprehensive list of plants in flower at Christmas time. When you think of it, it is a bit of a useless exercise − one of my own little foibles. I do make a record of plants in flower every day in my journal, but it is not a record that I can pull up in a second on the computer. I must do this one day so that at least as far as my garden is concerned I can get a print-out of flowering plants for any day of the year.
For the first weekend of the year my actual physical work in the garden is almost nil for fear that my head will fall off. I prefer to remember my successes not my failures. I have managed to retain all my cacti giving them shelter when they needed it, and good light as often as possible. I have sprayed my mangoes for leaf spot, but not for the moment having a power sprayer I haven’t been able to get to the topmost branches. I am always saddened by the sight of mango fruits in the market covered by the unsightly marks of anthracnose, a disease which can be easily cured and which is preventing the export of this most gorgeous of fruits .
My normal day starts at about 5am with a cup of the liquid that has kept the human race going for a few thousand years. Tea is derived from the Chinese plant Camellia sinensis, which was introduced to Darjeeling in India from where it eventually spread to Java and Sri Lanka. It is now the world’s most important caffeine followed closely by coffee obtained from two important kinds of plant, being Coffea arabica and C. robusta, a little bit of which is grown here in a small amount and for which I am very slowly, oh so very slowly, developing a liking − or is it an addiction?
Just leaving out water (only to be consumed under a great emergency such as a state of siege − so my best friend claims rightly), every drink I take and most of my friends take as well, is derived from plants. From sugar cane, from barley, from Prunus spinosa flavoured with juniper, and from the humble grape, Vitis vinifera. This was mostly, I might add, made originally by monks who had nothing better to do with their time, thanks be to God. I find it heartening that after a lifetime being warned off all of these delights by my parents and grandparents alike, I have come to the long overdue realization now trumpeted by the medical profession that a little of what you fancy is nearly always good for you taken in moderation. With these cautionary words may your God go with you.
