Each year, at Christmas or New Year, or mostly those quiet days in between the two festivals, I have a custom of giving a small plant and a card to the neighbours that share a drive with me.
It started because I am never organised enough to arrange Christmas cards (although I buy them every year from the charity I like to support at this time of year) or neighbourly gatherings for mince pies and drinks. Somehow it was easier when my foster daughter was here, but since then, everything has drifted.
So I would visit one of the garden centres and buy small pots of spring flowers, usually miniature daffodils or hyacinths with jewel-like hues, and leave them with a card at each neighbour's back door. One year, I was ahead of myself and bought Christmas cacti in full bloom instead, but it's risky buying pot plants with a life longer than a few weeks - you bring an obligation into someone's life and you never know if the blooms will clash with their decor.
Spring bulbs, though, they are simply a joy! Beautiful bright colours, an antidote to England's relentless drab skies, bright sturdy leaves thrusting up so purposefully against the cold temperatures. They make everyone happy and they only have to keep them alive long enough to enjoy the boost and then they can be left to their own devices outside, free of guilt.
This year I was even later than usual (it's March). The winter festivals passed me by, half-term was taken up with other things, but last Saturday the sun shone and what a difference it made. I had some errands to run on Monday and, at one of my stops, I found these miniature daffodils, just coming into bloom.
They needed a few days nurturing in my back porch, well watered - I think they've all grown an inch. I remembered these little cards which I bought from Persephone Books, lately of Bloomsbury but now based in Bath (of course, where else would you go from Bloomsbury)?
I've had them years, they were a pre-pandemic purchase. Originally, they were to give each of the cousins in the next generation with a small gift of crypto inside. I decided to maintain stewardship of the crypto until it's a more spectacular gift and worth the faff of opening an account.
So the little cards were redundant, resting quietly in a box in the office drawers, waiting their turn, until today when I remembered them and thought, just what I need.
Luckily, it is still sunny and bright today, with a temperature of 16 degrees Celsius, and I shall enjoy pottering up the drive, plant pots and cards in hand, practicing for when I am an old lady and make jam and crumbles from my own blackberries and wander about giving them to people whether they need them or not.
Interestingly there is a piece of land which provides access to the drive and, as the first house, I have ownership of it. I smiled when I read the deeds because, although I own it, I can do nothing with it and must allow free passage for people and carriages, burdened and unburdened.
I'm saving the benefit of it for when I grow old and can wear purple and a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me, and imagine standing outside with my walking frame, shaking my fist at people and carriages as they pass, burdened and unburdened.
That will be after the days when I have a little stall outside the garage selling seedlings and tomatoes and jams and the school children come rushing down the drive trailing their mums and dads after them, anxious to get the raspberry buns before they sell out.
What a life I shall have, I might even plant my own Spring flowers in the Autumn.
What a life indeed, that sounds like a fine version of the future! 🙂
I have to imagine it, to live it 😁
I feel like I should share this with someone. My wife, my beautiful loving wife has a big problem.
It doesn't matter what we are doing, where we are going or where we are coming from. IF she says a pretty plant ANYWHERE. Side of the road, hanging out of a commercial building, on the middle of an intersection, in a public park, it doesn't matter. She goes for it.
I learnt, many years ago, her criminal activities have a name: Green Blight.
It's for this very reason she has an exotic collection of plants around the house, and why we have these very delicious yet tiny tomatoes growing here as well. They are half the size of a grape--wild dwarf tomatoes, she just had to have.
there, got it out of my system
Your wife sounds perfect 😁
I grew up next door to my mother's aunt, so it was like having a grandma in the next house. She was the same whenever we went on any outing, she would take a little heel of a shrub, or the tip of plant, nurture it all the way home and eventually, there would be a beautiful plant in the garden.
Can we have a picture of the tiny tomatoes? The hive gardeners would love it 😍
not my picture, but these are it...
Perfect, the kind you can just pick of the plant and pop in your mouth!
I think @akipponn's daughter would love these!
they are delicious! I do just that... I wash them and eat them like candy!
If the rain didn't take them all (it's been raining cats and dogs), I'll share a picture with you.
😍
Such a beautiful vision of a future life and a lovely current one with the idea of the bulbs for your neighbours. I love the cards of course too. Such fortunate neighbours!
My neighbours are all lovely, we have some small children now as well. One of them, a small boy, came out to tell me all about his friends who live next door. The cards were a real find, I love the envelopes. I'm hoping they are still for sale in the online shop, otherwise I will have to make a trip to Bath.
A trip to Bath? Now that's dedication. I haven't been there for years but it used to be a regular haunt in my youth. It was the only place in the UK with a Laura Ashley shop at one time. And, as a child, I had piano lessons there from a great aunt. In Landsdown Crescent no less. Not that I was of an age to appreciate it. My lasting memory is of musty dark chocolate digestives offered from a tin when the lessong was over. 😁
I've been planning to go to Bath for several decades. There used to be a day coach trip that I could pick up just down the road, but I could never get organised for the 7.30am pick up time. That would have been favourite, no responsibilities.
I guess I would stay overnight now to break up the travelling. There's a yarn shop there as well I would like to visit. I did go to the bookshop regularly when it was in London.
All this will be easier to organise when I give up the job.
Yeah. That was a great choice - to give up the job. All these adventures await you. Hopefully you'll come and visit us too!
It's a great idea to gift plants. And the cards are beautiful! I always picked chocolates for neighbors ... 😅
Yes, I often get sweet treats from my neighbours, especially for Eid, and sometimes dinners!
wow, nice
🙂