Mourn Day Thursday?

When looking around the garden to see what has survived the winter, it was sad to see the lemon trees have been badly affected by that snow but one perennial survivor is my banana palm pictured today. It is able to stay out in all weathers and keeps its fronds all year around, mainly because it is made from the finest plastic and metal known to man. If I had my way (which regular readers will know is an utter pipe dream) all the plants in the garden would be plastic, how much less labour intensive would that be?

Imagine, at the end of October, a quick five-minute trot around the garden to collect up and bring in all the flowers, stuff them into the washing machine with a bit of Ariel then a quick wash and spin dry, iron and then in the drawer until February and back out again ready for spring and summer, very civilised. No pruning, watering, spraying with insect repellent, no work at all, least of all digging and being mutilated by malevolent plants.

Read my palm?

I think you may be able to gather from the sentiments expressed in the last paragraph that I was required to do yet more gardening again today. There seemed to be no allowance granted for my having to get up about three hours before dawn to be at La Pomme Rouge in Valbonne for the Riviera Business Club breakfast networking event at the ungodly (at Easter!) hour of 8.30am, where I continued my missionary work of spreading the word about the benefits of opening a foreign exchange account with Currencies Direct. Don’t forget the traveling time and preparation required. I had to set the alarm for 8 10, imagine! I even saw kids actually going to school.

Anyway, back to the gardening. That nice lady gardener had decided in her innate wisdom that a Phoenix palm had been planted too close to a Yucca plant about a year ago. She did not seem to recall that it was her idea that it was planted there in the first place under her careful direction, or to take account of the physical damage I had suffered planting said item at the time. She also did not seem to have considered the damage that might be wreaked to her loved one by digging it up a year later. For the uninitiated, both plants, now grown into trees, have a massive number of spiky thorny protuberances seemingly designed to lie in wait for any hapless and unenthusiastic gardener to come near and then strike, repeatedly, and to draw blood. Whoever designed these plants (and the Reverend Jeff would contend it was God) must have been having a spiteful day when he invented these two. I might have been killed by that Phoenix, but I suppose in the Reverends little dream world that had happened to me today, on Good Friday, he would expected me to have risen again after the third day like one of Gods family. Nice fairy tale.

At least it being Friday and a public holiday for some I may be permitted to go out for lunch. So after dismissing the Wingco’s challenge to a game (and I mean winning it)  of tennis singles this morning I expect to enjoy a convivial lunch along with a few thousand others when I think we are going to share several loaves of bread and 5 fishes, or am I mixing something up here? I believe that this little parable was set in the open air but with continuing showers, and me still covered in bandages there may be a late venue change from the Cafe Des Arcades to Les Pierres Rouges.

Chris France