Sunday, August 14, 2011

"Spring has sprung..." Maybe.

One of my rare but blissful luxuries once was to escape to the tropics at this time of the year.
Our home, like most others,  always had  a fire of some kind that took the worst chill off the air in one room only, even though the house was like an icebox.  Shops and cars were not heated. It was a privilege as a senior,  in my last year at school, to sleep on an open air balcony.  It was winter:  it was cold.  I huddled miserably through an endless, interminable winter.
Term 2 finished around August 20th.  What absolute delight to go somewhere hot and lush.  Two weeks later, on returning, Spring had arrived.
I haven't had the heater on here for days....(15C is quite warm enough for me, of course).
As I walked past a neglected corner of the garden, I suddenly realised that the 2 or 3 metre high pittosporum had disappeared.  Where had it gone?
Jasmine is a merry, romping little boa constrictor.  It covered the pittosporum like a dust cover. It was covered with its pretty white and cerise flower buds:  a week later and I would have been fighting the bees as well as the tendrils.
Abutilon is also a thug:  it's lanterns are blooming, so its execution has been stayed.   Ditto periwinkle, that push-me-pull-you that roots itself at both ends.  I enjoy its delightful blue blossoms for a few weeks, and spend the rest of the year pulling it out.  Thanks for the offer, Mr Monsanto, but I decline your help.
Looks like Spring.  Confession:  I still haven't raked up all the autumn leaves.

3 comments:

R.H. said...

My early years were in a little wooden house at the end of a no-through. There was a strip of dirt at the front fence. Someone gave me three hollyhock seeds and I pushed them into the dirt. For a while I kept an eye out for anything happening and eventually lost interest. Then walking past there one day I got an enormous surprise to find three eruptions in the earth as sprouts pushed through. I hadn't even started school then and got one of the important lessons already; while you're playing in the street other things are going on, a force, survival, the world in a tiny seed.

R.H. said...

I forgot to say how I enjoyed reading your post. Thanks.

Frances said...

Lovely, R.H. Thanks.