In which I get a phone call....

It’s extremely hard keeping track of your dreams when you have two young Witchlets who consider five in the morning a suitable time to get up and jump on your bed. Time to write down my dream? No chance. Time to even go over it in my head? You’ve got to be joking. Believe me, the gods tell me things, The Old Man has a good old time and Hekate teaches me in my dreams. This I know. It’s very, very frustrating to just lose it all because I am accosted by my offspring each and every morning. I know it’s still in there, somewhere, but I have no idea how to access it. Still, I am ultimately grateful when I do manage to retain a glimpse of the hidden nocturnal world. I woke up at three o’clock (yes, in the wee small hours) yesterday with full recollection of a very short dream. In it, my mobile had rung with the tune “Let it Snow”, and when I answered it, Mother Elder said “I’m coming. If you want to save your pelargoniums, dahlias and begonia, do it now.” And then I woke up.

Well, something as direct as that definitely has to be acted on. So, in the five hours of kid-free time I had yesterday, I decanted the dahlias from their containers, absolutely chuffed to find that they had produced HUGE hand-like tubers in one year:

(I grew ‘em from seed this year - go me!) So I brushed them off to go into the greenhouse (also known as the four-tier plastic covered shelving unit, but greenhouse sounds like I REALLY know what I’m doing), along with the one surviving begonia (eight corms bought this year; a real extravagance. Four didn’t do anything at all, two rotted off, and one more got attacked by vine weevils) and two gorgeous orange-red pelargoniums, pruned back and re-potted. The last, and biggest of the pelargoniums is still in full flower, so I’ve brought it indoors and told it that it’s on holiday. 

Just imagine you’re in the Med, my dear, I said, and stuck it on the dining room table with a fervent prayer that the pot is too big and heavy for the Witchlets to knock off.

Just as I was about to finish up for the day, the postman arrived with my pot of the necrofuckingtastic plum rum sauce from Ms Graveyard Dirt. Just for good measure, she stuck in a plum pit and some wheat seeds (getting a package from Ms Dirty is always a delight; the wheat seeds came in the most adorable little envelope), so off I went back to the garden to plant both pit and wheat. I’ve had quite a bit of luck with growing trees from seed - numerous apple trees from seeds, a nectarine, holly, rowan and even a walnut (although that was Witchlet One really - he stuck it half in to a pot of compost and I was shocked to find that it germinated!) - so we’ll see how the plum pit goes. Give it ten years, I might be weighed under by 24lbs of plums!!

And while I was lugging various pots about the garden, I discovered a pot of spring onions I sowed back in May and forgot about.  What a bonus!

So, Mother Elder, thanks for the warning. Bring on your frost and your snow; cover my garden in your carpet of frozen white. I am ready for you now, I offer my garden up to your care for the winter. Take that which is your right, and I will gladly take the garden back from you in the spring.