There are two pictorial additions to these pages tonight. The first is the sentence just above this paragraph. You are supposed to click on it. This worked when I had a go, and so I hope it works if you try it. It is a link to Oliver’s made-for-school film. Their in-house homework was to make a trailer encouraging people to come to Duffus House, and I have attached it because it made me laugh.
He has taken the picture of his year group being waiters, and given them some adventures.
The last bit that you need to know is that the House symbol is a bull.
Let me know if it doesn’t work. Probably I won’t be able to do anything about it because of being a technical inadequate, but at least I will know not to bother trying again. It took me about fifteen minutes’ faffing about as it was.
The second picture is of a mysterious plant that we discovered in the flower bed in the conservatory this afternoon.
We had been replanting the strawberries when we noticed it in the corner of the bed.
Do not worry about the strawberries. They have not been very much replanted, actually. They represent an experiment about planting things in guttering with wicks dangling into water. The soil had not been packed tightly enough and they were getting a bit dry. We have resolved the problem and they are flowering beautifully, we will be able to have lettuce and strawberries for dinner in a couple of weeks.
Back to the picture.
I have included it here because we would like some horticultural advice.
Does anybody know what it is?
We looked at it in absolute astonishment, because of course it looks very much like cannabis. I need to add here that we do not use recreational drugs, unless you count alcohol, and although I was young once, it was a jolly long time ago, and I am now a respectable matron in my late middle years.
Hence we were mystified.
We dug it up. This was not because we were overcome with the wickedness of having a potentially criminal seedling in our garden, but because it was right at the edge of the flower bed and we thought it might do better in the middle.
This led to another surprise.
It did not have a network of little roots. It had one single tap root, smooth and determined, which went down, and down, and down.
It was far longer than the most established dock roots. It was almost a metre long.
I had to dig it out very carefully indeed in order not to break it.
This made me think that it might not be cannabis. I have only got very limited experience of cannabis plants, but nobody has ever remarked that you have got to grow them in vertical drainpipes.
I thought that perhaps it might be a Japanese maple, but some online investigation informed me that Japanese maple trees have horizontal roots.
I considered a horse chestnut, but we have got several growing from conkers in pots at the moment, and none of them look in the least like this.
We replanted it by making a hole with a very long stick and carefully sliding the endless root down into it. I watered it well so that it doesn’t die before I have found out what it is.
Whatever it is, I have not got the first idea where it has come from, or how it might have found its way into our conservatory. The only soil in there is either from the muck heap at the farm, or the compost heap at the house. Neither of them are likely to include cannabis seeds, unless the farmer next door has become suddenly and unexpectedly wild in his declining years.
Mark wondered if somebody local has been growing it, and the birds have somehow managed to deposit a seed in their poo, but that did not seem very likely to me, so probably it is not a wicked rascally plant that deserves immediate execution, but something innocent and virtuous.
We have suspended judgement until we find out. It would not at all be kind to pass a sentence of capital punishment on some poor blameless member of the lupin family.
Answers on a postcard please…
