Blogs: Pandammonia 
The world that revolves around Caity Ross.
Archive for the ‘Plants’ tag
Unpeaceful
A while ago, I showed you a photo of my lovely peace lily in bloom for the first time in six years. I am sorry to break the bad news to you, but that plant is now dead. It is brown and shrivelled and very dead. I am not happy about this and less happy about the fact that it was my own fault for not having watered it sufficiently.
I propagated it some time ago, so all is not lost. That plant is on the kitchen window sill, yellowing.
I was recently reminded about the benefits of watering plants with leftover cold tea out the teapot. Unfortunately, I use teabags. I’ll just have to make my second peace lily a special cup whenever I make myself one, although I’ll have to leave hers to cool before I give it to her and remember about it later, and prevent Colin from pouring it away.
Mmm, tea. Yes, I think I’ll make those cuppas now.
Cat barf
The cat was on the bed in the sun. I was elsewhere, but near enough to hear the dulcet tones of the cat barfing on the bed. Only a short while beforehand, she had said she wanted to go out, but changed her furry mind at the last minute. After barfing, she did go out, and started eating the grass. You may recall I bought some cat grass specially for her. Was it this grass she was eating? No, of course not. It was the lawn, as usual. When I put the cat grass in front of her, she moved away to another patch of lawn.
That cat!
Yesterday, I went to the farmers’ market, and bought some fruit and veg and meat. I also sample raspberry brandy—quite tasty, actually—and bought the cat some cat grass and a small sheepskin pet mat.
Peace
When I started working in Cambridge, I bought a peace lily to give me something nice to look at in the soulless office with its spiky, unfriendly plants. It was in flower when I bought it, but it has never flowered again since.
Until now, six years later.
My peace lily in flower
When we got back to Cambridge after my mam’s graduation shenanigans, there was a flower bud! It’s opened now, and it’s not very big, but it’s there and it’s beautiful! I’m very happy indeed.
Weekend stuff so far
Friday night: got pissed in the Maypole.
Saturday morning: had hangover.
Saturday afternoon: cycled with Colin to the Cambridge pitch ‘n’ putt place, independently of the conversation on said activity the night before. Pitched ‘n’ putted. I think it’s safe to say that I was pretty dire and Colin was pretty good, except that I returned the same number of balls that I’d started with whereas Colin returned one less. That’s not to say I didn’t lose balls. There just happened to be other balls in the ditch that I repeatedly lobbed the ball into that could be retrieved instead. One had obviously been there some time. That one replaced the one that fell directly into the water and was quickly swallowed by the silty ooze as opposed to the one that landed at the edge somewhere. Colin’s ball landed in the lake and was deemed irretrievable. That was after he’d played the ball on the previous hole fantastically so it went flying over the lake and through the trees and onto the far edge of the green. I, after the ditch debacle, decided to tee off from the easy tee, which didn’t involve having to get the ball over said lake. After that, we cycled to a local nature reserve, where there were bluebells, ivy, yellow flowers, trees, other plants and birds, and looked at Byron’s Pool, then cycled to Grantchester, and decided not to eat at the Orchard because the queue was really quite long. Then we cycled home again.
Saturday evening: got Chinese takeaway from the pub.
Sunday morning: rudely awakened by Colin looking out the window to see what the noise that had rudely awakened him was. I looked out and discovered there were two rampant dogs in next door’s garden. The cat was out. She goes next door sometimes: there’s a gap in their fence and our hedge she goes through. I looked out the window and saw her on our wall by the gate, on the opposite side to the hedge. I went to let her in. She came in pretty quicksmart. And just in time, too, because the brighter of the two dogs came through her gap shortly after and went beserk in our garden. The other remained next door. Going more beserk. Colin got dressed and went out into the garden (rather him than me) and I fetched a bowl of water on his bidding. The dog was really thirsty and it calmed down a bit after a drink. Colin found a phone number on the dog’s choker chain, so I phoned it up. The woman who answered said she’d be here shortly to get them. Colin rang next door’s doorbell; the woman answered it, looking sleepy. He told her there was a dog in their back garden. “Oh, that’s what it is,” she said. Colin told them someone would be coming for it soon. Some time later, a young woman knocked on our door with a cigarette in her hand. The smoke wafted in the house, and stunk, even though she didn’t come in. She said she wasn’t the owner and couldn’t take the dogs away. I’m not sure why she came round, to be honest. She did say the owner lived just up the road and she’d be coming soon. After what seemed like ages, with the dog next door flinging itself against the fence and barking and whining and generally being stupid in the way that canines are and the woman whinging, “it’s wrecking everything!” and the dog in our garden jumping up at Colin, wandering round the lawn sniffing, lying on the lawn eating the grass, flinging itself against the gate and generally being stupid in the way that canines are, the owner finally came round to collect them. She’d been to next door first, which was probably just as well because I don’t think they’d given “their” dog any water. After she’d gone, I looked at the clock. Nine o’clock, on the dot. In the morning. On a Sunday. We went back to bed.
Rest of Sunday: lounged around the house, recovering from the previous day’s exertions and reassuring poor puss that the nasty dogs had gone and the garden was perfectly safe for her again.
P-words
Apparently, in Bininj Gun-wok, poo has vegetable gender if its visible contents, after a few days in the sun, are mainly plant matter. As does penis.
- Evans, Brown and Corbett (2002) The semantics of gender in Mayali: partially parallel systems and formal implementation. Language, Vol 78, No 1.
Gardening terror
I decided I’d attack the rose hip plant thing beside the buddleia I hacked at yesterday, when I discovered a spider living on a web in it. It was no ordinary spider; it was even bigger than yesterday’s! Today’s was also greener, where yesterday’s was brown. Bark-coloured, you might say. I decided not to prune the rose hip any more after that, and moved on to the buddleia by the window instead. I hacked that down without incident, and decided to do something about the weeds under the other rose hip before hacking at that.
Bad idea. That was when I saw the second spider. Ugh. I decided to leave it for another day. Just as well, really, because now there’s a thunder storm – eek! Actually, it’s not too bad, and the cat’s in now as well. She’s sitting on the scanner/printer, watching it and washing herself.
Ooh, the storm’s getting closer! I’m less happy now, and so’s Puss – she’s hiding on my knee now. Maybe the spiders did me a favour after all, making sure I was in the house before the storm broke.
I don’t suppose the rain will do the cricket any good.