It was a gorgeous warm sunny day – blue sky, fleecy clouds, blackbirds singing nearby. As I went up the garden, to go and work in my shed, I passed the very small, but madly overgrown flower border that reminded me of ‘The Day of the Triffids’. It badly needed attention, and during the morning, every time I passed by, I yanked up a few weeds, or snipped a few stalks off the strange plants that were bursting out of their earthy bed – sprawling everywhere, all over the path.
Everything was growing like giants. Nasturtiums with huge leaves were shooting up and blotting out most of the sunlight from smaller plants, like the marigolds, overshadowed, struggling bravely to survive in the gloomy darkness.
Took a few phone photos of the nasturtiums. I was pleased to see that the garden bugs had enjoyed quite a few good meals from their enormous leaves.
The sunflower plants were doing pretty well too – now taller than myself (though no flowers as yet). But there were only 3 of them! Only 2 tall sunflowers and one shorter one had survived and grown from the 12 seeds I’d planted. There was also another huge plant growing up very close to one of them. I still haven’t a clue what it is, and don’t dare pull it up in case it makes the sunflower fall over.
I was so disappointed not to have a whole row of 12… I blame the local birds . They just don’t care!
And what were all these other strange plants, that seemed to be literally doubling in number and size every day? I thought that many of them looked a bit like potato plants – but they couldn’t be, because I hadn’t involved myself with spuds for at least a couple of years. If they were indeed spud plants…. how on earth had they got there?
I cut back the biggest plants, and uprooted a few of the smaller ones – and told my husband I was going to uproot the whole lot, because obviously nothing was going to grow out of them.
I got to work with a small garden fork, and was astonished (well, shocked, actually) to see a large, very healthy looking spud (Desiree) coming up out of the ground.
Later, indoors, with a nice cup of tea, I finally figured out the answer to something that had been puzzling me for a long time. I worked out the reason for all those giant nasturtiums and the crazy proliferation of strange plants, as well as the healthy crop of spuds.
It wasn’t seeds from the patch of wildflowers I planted a year ago to attract butterflies.
It wasn’t some strange alien virus that was going to make the plants creep into the house at night.
It all came from the load of compost I had chucked on to the garden over a year ago, when we got rid of our old compost bin. Of course! How silly!
I think I might give up gardening for now, and am wondering whether you can think of any other interesting hobbies I might take up?
THROUGHSTONES 