Short Stories of Lockdown
A few interesting events that have happened for me during lockdown
The frogs
We have a pond and this year despair...... no frogs, no frog spawn. Every year there have been frogs.
In truth I have done little to care for my pond in the last few years and have noticed it has got darker and darker... not a place where one would desire to live... even as a frog…… clearly not a frog heaven. So, curious to see if the thick layer of mud at the bottom could be a problem, I decided to clean out the pond.
This turned out to be a mammoth task. I had a foot of black smelly mud and decided to spread bucket after bucket of this goo across the garden and the lawn. The colour of my clothing, already dark, darkened further. I was delighted when I did find a few frogs in the mud in the process but it was nothing like the numbers we have had in past years. So, some had decided it was not too bad a place to live after all.
Well it is all done and you can see the three foot to the bottom and like a magnet the frogs are back. They seem to have smelt out the clean bathing from their hiding places and converged. We now have many frogs and lots of frog spawn. One was even treating the place as a swimming baths and doing breast stroke back and for. I have never seen this done before.
I have told Maureen that the black goo from my hard work which is spread over the garden and lawn is nutritious and we will have excellent plants this year. I missed out that the lawn now looks like it has been converted to soil. My sense of smell is fortunately at this time very poor so I could not comment on the new aroma. I don't think she was convinced by my convincing line as our green lawn had gone black….. but I really do expect the grass to grow through. We will have lots of compost this year.
The next morning, we awoke to find several magpies and crows striding across the lawn, presumably attracted by the belief of a tasty worm or two to be had. They did not seem to find anything and after a preamble they left.
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Growing Petunias
Last year I collected some seeds of a blue Petunia I had in the garden – a very pretty variety and I chose it because it lasted to the end of the season and kept flowering in the approaching cold of winter. Well I planted the seeds in a tray. I thought some might come up so was not worried that it was just the simple random sprinkle.
They came up, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. So, I have spent a lot of time pricking out seedings and putting them in slots in trays. Cramp did not appear. There were four trays at the start with well over a hundred in each tray. I have a lot more to prick out. They were all put under polythene lock down; my attempt to give them some warm humid sun. Then there were eight trays and I was still to make a substantial indent into numbers.
Not wanting to waste the living, all of the space has now been used up in our shed. A number of treasured possessions have had to go out. But they are not far away in the weather proofing of a black polythene rubbish bag in the garden.
I have even placed one tray on top of the flat vacuum cleaner and all of the plastic tubs we have are now done ready in waiting for the onslaught when the plants go outside. It is multifunctional because the vacuum cleaner will still operate well from its new position.
So, I will be the beholder of hundreds and hundreds of Petunias. Alan Titchmarsh would be proud of me. He would say “you can be in charge of bedding and go to sleep”.
We have a small garden so does anybody out there want some. We have plenty! But I need to tell you that they are all one colour – blue. ….. but it is a heavenly blue. I looked the variety up on Google to find that it is called Daddies Blue……. Very cute!