Potting In The Potting Shed

The jury remains out on whether alcohol is good or bad. Drinking it in excessive quantities, that is.

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.”  So said Benjamin Franklin.

Viscountess Nancy Astor (non-drinking Winston Churchill colleague)  was a lot more serious, and probably more correct factually, when she said “One reason I don't drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time.”

In recent weeks I have come across a strange phenomenon whilst messing around in the garden, especially while I was tidying the “natural” undergrowth along the boundary fences. On three different occasions, I encountered small glass bottles, what I would describe as “half jacks.”

In South Africa the term “half jack” is used to describe a small flat glass bottle of spirits, usually brandy, vodka, or cane spirits. Its shape is ideal for concealment of the liquor in a jacket pocket. From my discoveries, I arrived at the conclusion that one of the earlier property owners must have been some sort of “secret boozer.” The idea was further cemented when we found yet another bottle of the same brand at the back of the animal fodder shed, a place that no-one really frequents.

(Above): Jim Beam Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, sour mash. The Beam Formula, a standard since 1795. Non genuine without my signature, signed James B Beam. Distilled and bottled by James B Beam Distilling Co, Beam Clermont, Frankfort, Kentucky USA. 375ml 37.0% Alc/Vol

Others in the family have been pulling my leg about my “secret drinking problem”, and as a tribute to our Mystery Half-jacker, I have decided to display the latest find, which is still in a brand-new condition, as a decoration in the potting shed, which we plan to refurbish and re-construct on the outskirts of the planned veggie garden.

An old Scottish proverb goes: “You speak of my drinking, yet you don't know my thirst”

Farewell to a Friend

Earlier to-day, bearing in mind that overnight we’d had 55 mm of rain (two inches in the ‘old’ language) and that the weatherman was predicting reasonably brrrrr nippy breeze conditions, I walked across the yard to the greenhouse. Now, I know that any man worth his salt has a ‘shed’, in many parts of the world. Here, I do not have a shed, but there is a greenhouse, which is far better – a combination indoor garden, where I can stand up or sit down under relatively dry conditions even in the fiercest of storms, and it doubles as a sort-of ‘workshop’ on an agricultural sense.

Now, the wall cladding to some of the panels is in need of replacement, because of treatment metered out by the Labradors whilst they were still puppies and they believed that they must hunt down and destroy anything that moves in the wind, even side panels to greenhouses. So, we don’t have ideal growing conditions there yet, but a crop of tomatoes and a few Marigolds have survived the last season there.

I started pottering around.

Now, when I was a lad I understood that ‘pottering’ by grand-dad was a euphemistic term which described they way he tried to dodge grand-ma whenever he could, where he could sit and do nothing but smoke and snooze. If asked what grand-dad was doing, without actually knowing the meaning, you’d confidently reply

“He’s pottering down in the shed, I think.”

Potter: I was always under the impression that the word relates to the trade of making clay pots on a potter’s wheel. However, the Free Dictionary defines it as “mess about, fiddle (informal), tinker, dabble, fritter, footle (informal), poke along, fribble.”

So, as I no longer partake in the burning of the tobacco leaf, and I only feel drowsy and sleepy in the late afternoons, the pottering ‘thing’ was a bit of problem for me. Instead, I fetched gardening gloves and secateurs, and set out to remove the hanging tomato planters and the spent dried-out stalks of the 2013/14 tomato plants, snipping them into bite-sized chunks for the compost heap, as well as other past-sell-by-date plants, leaving empty plant containers and seedlings.

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(Above): Empty and damaged greenhouse viewed from the entrance door.

Whilst doing further ‘house-keeping’ in the greenhouse, I stumbled across two critters – nothing unusual for a regular gardener – but, then, as you will be aware, I am not a regular gardener. My interest was caught by a shiny bullet-shaped being in a silken thread. On closer investigation, it turned out to be a sort-of plastic pupa-thingy, but certainly a living being and a shiny living being, at that.

I looked at the pupa-thing and tried to categorise him-her-it. You know, like they do. The scientists are especially good at putting creatures into little boxes, with all sorts of long Latin names to identify them. I like to keep things simple. There are family, friends, and then there are others. Who are they? Are they, by definition, strangers? W.B.Yeats wrote “There are no strangers. Only friends you haven’t yet met.”

Let’s take that one step further. Man’s best friend, the Dog. Is he a “friend”? If so, then I must conclude that friends are not limited to the human sort. And a Cat? and a Budgie? and what about a Gold Fish? and, yes, what about a Silk-Worm.

You can see where this going, can’t you? We live in a world where it’s no longer PC to label people in a manner which may been as degrading. The vertically challenged… you know the rest – a long list. I prefer to label them “friends”, irrespective of what type of creature they are.

Therefore, this pupa-thingy is actually a newly-made friend.

“Hi Pupa-thingy,” I greeted him-her-it, “from now on I will call you ‘Pupa-thingy’ until I learn your official name.”

I took Pupa-thingy’s picture, as pictured above.

I looked at Pupa-thingy, and realised that this bullet-shaped pod will develop into another creature-thing, and eat all our future seedlings and tomatoes and stuff. I paused to consider the probability. Hmmmm.

I pressed my boot on the Pupa-thingy. Greenish juice squirted out and the Pupa-thingy was no longer a thingy. It must have been one of the shortest-lived friendships in history. My newest friend was no longer a friend.