Is it Autumn already?

The amaryllis is coming up in my garden. Do my garden bulbs know more than I do about the seasons? Golly, it was 33 celsius today, that’s over 91 degrees in the old measurement. And my garden thinks the Summer is over?

In any case, I should be putting in my bulbs for Spring. You know what a bulb is? It’s a potential flower buried in Autumn, never to be seen again.

I’ve got these daffodils to go in, on the packet they’re described as “Carefree” and “Grandma’s Favourite”. Carefree usually refers more to the plant’s attitude than to my workload, and Grandma’s Favourite were the bulbs she planted until she discovered the free-flowering, disease-resistant hybrids.

Ah well, this is the time of year I remember that I have knees. (Knee: a device for finding rocks in your garden)

A buxom poppy

I thought there were only two kinds of Poppies. The narcotic one they make films in strange countries about, and the poppy of wartime remembrance, the red corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas, a common weed across Europe.

But there are more poppies than this. Apart from Nero’s wife (the one who liked the milk baths, I bet she never had to clean her own bathtub) there is another one - the Buxom Poppy.

The Buxom Poppy has a whole blog Horrifying Foodstuffs on the topic of, basically, nausea. It takes all types to make a world and if the poor dear girl wants to hoard recipes that would make you feel guilty just buying the ingredients much less serving them up to people, I’m sure it’s not my place to criticise.

She even wants to make her blog as horrible looking as she can, and to this end is talking about choosing a colour scheme of avocado green, harvest gold, and burnt pumpkin. Her mother should tell her those colours are in fact, not horrible, but very soothing and nostalgic. A slight hint of puce would add the crowning touch.

For those who want to know about the milk bath, just ask the ladies who made it a daily routine. Even though their milk of choice cane from an ass, a cow is just as good (and much cheaper then asses’ milk), and you can still Bathe like Cleo and Poppy

Bathtubs and Telephones

Why does the phone always ring the minute I climb in the tub? This morning I was all set for a little soak when some pest selling brick cladding was on the blower. It’s as though there is some etheric connection between the two. A vibration that resounds in the ionsphere when the bath salts are added to the tub. But think of this ;-

The bathtub was invented in 1850.

The telephone was invented in 1875.

This might not seem like much but, if you had lived back then, you could have sat in the bathtub for 25 years without being bothered by the phone

Another Kindly Reader …

I interrupt this blog to thank the kind lady over at In a Coma who chipped in for a glass of sherry.

She’s a Melbourne girl, and understands the plight of the pensioners who find it increasingly difficult these days with the cost of living increases to get a good bottle of sherry. Dear me, last week, what with the gas bill, the arthritis pills and the cat license, I had to get a bottle of cooking sherry. The young chap in the bottleshop asked me what I was going to cook. What a drongo. Young people of today have no idea of hardship. In my day we would never waste a drop of cooking sherry on cooking.

I’m just about to have a little sip now with my slippers off

The Colour Purple

After my morning nap and a small glass of Seppelts Purple Para Port, I got my notebook and pen and looked at the colour arrangements again in Incogblogo where the young lass allows you to ‘change skins”. (If only) (I like to see how she’s getting along in her quest to achieve 4000 comments. Apparently she needs only 92 more.)

I found this particularly valuable in choosing a new scheme for my kitchen. She has a couple of lovely mauve and lilac shades that would be just perfect. I think the colour purple is very me. Sort of royal. And my name is Queenie after all.

Cleopatra loved purple too. To obtain one ounce of Tyrian purple dye, she had her servants soak 20,000 Purpura snails for 10 days.

I wonder if my garden snails would produce the same results.

Petropavlosk Kamchatsky

I had another little look at the Clust’r Map in the right hand column over there, and found that there was someone in Petropavlosk Kamchatsky reading this.

Of course I had to look up where Petropavlosk Kamchatsky is. In my day that was ‘behind the Iron Curtain’ and you would be blasted by a lightning bolt if you even looked it up on an atlas.

My school atlas didn’t even have regions marked in those days, just a big fearful red blotch of colour behind the Iron Curtain. But times have changed and we are now allowed to look at the Soviet countries, talk to the people in them, sell them dodgy hamburgers, move next door and marry their daughters.

The world is very small up there isn’t it? You don’t realise how crammed together those places are, everyone is crowded in a little circle around the North Pole, you could take a canoe around with no trouble.

It’s a wonder they aren’t better neighbours being so close, but that might be the problem. Living too squashed together causes outbreaks of name-calling and petty insults, you know what the High Rise are like.

Going shopping? Take your rubber gloves

Shopping trolleys and me don’t get on. I always get one that wants to trundle along the baby foods aisle when I want to go the other way to the cereals (high fibre). It makes you wonder if they really did put a man on the moon if they can’t design a working shopping trolley with wheels that turn in more than direction.

But it get’s worse. Shopping Trolleys are full of Germs with 1,100 colony forming units of bacteria per 10 sq cm (1.55 sq inches) !! These days it’s scarcely safe to step outside.

Fortunately I have a large supply of pink rubber gloves. Next time I’m in the supermarket I’ll whip them out before I tackle a truculent trolley.

Pyschedelia Nostalgia

This renting blogs is like a lucky dip, isn’t it? You don’t know what you’re going to pull out.

My Council Home Help girl helped me choose my renter Incogblogo this week, and I know why. It’s got this weird device that allows you to change colours anytime you wish. You can read one post in blue, another in purple, another in green and so on.

Why anyone would want to do such a thing is beyond me, I became quite giddy watching the whirling colours while I tried to answer the question “What budding disco icon manged only to shout “Blasphemer! Blasphemer!” in his first film role as a satanic priest in Devil’s Rain?”

I had to have a little sit-down with my shoes off and a small glass of sherry. There is a time and a place for colours in this world, unless you happen to pine for the psychedelic years.

Perhaps the young lass who writes the blog was brought up in one of those free love communes and she’s recapturing her nursery years. She would be better off with a small sherry

The Perils of Spinach

My Council Home Help girl gave me a book today. She’s supposed to be dusting and running the vac over the rug, but she gave me a discourse on the benefits of spinach and a cookbook with over 300 recipes of the vile stuff.

The author, who probably wears hairshirts as well, calls her book I Love Spinach!

Can you imagine? Spinach! Typical of my Council Home Help girl, sticking her nose in people’s private gastric affairs. (I strongly suspect she is an ageing hippie, always in the garden with those funny herbs and things)

“There’s an old French Proverb” she said, “Spinach is the broom of the stomach.”

That’s one way of putting it, I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it

Foreigners have visited me

My neighbour put this little map in here. See it? Clust’r maps, in the right column there.

It shows me all these foreign lands with people who came here and looked at my diary. It gave me quite a turn! I had to sit down with an asprin and a small glass of sweet sherry to recover.

You would think these people had nothing better to do. Would you voluntarily choose to read an old lady’s diary? But I suppose foreigners have a different way of spending their time. When they have any time left over from growing their strange foreign vegetables.

They must get very tired speaking a foreign language too, it takes a lot out of you. I know what it’s like, a simple stroll to get a pint of milk from the corner shop can be exhausting.

With a bongiorno and a bella gianata to Mrs DiBenedetto and Mrs Poggioreale, a kalimera to Mrs Karayannis and a buenos dias to Mrs Ramirez, by the time I reach the corner I have to stop for a little rest. Fortunately Mrs Nguen speaks English.

The map shows people from USA have been here, I think they speak mainly English, a type of English at any rate, at least as understandable as Danish. Although I don’t think they actually grow any strange foreign vegetables or any vegetables at all for that matter. I’ve seen them on the telly, their vegetables come in packets.

It takes all types I suppose.