I had a very splendid surprise this morning.
You might recall that on my office windowsill is a large pot plant called an Elephant’s Foot, bought for me several years ago by Number One Son-In-Law. It was a Dumbo-sized elephant’s foot when it arrived, however, you will probably remember that it has spent the intervening years becoming an enormously clodhopping elephant’s foot.
I like it very much, and water it every morning with the last of the water that I take to bed at night, so that it gets little and often, which it seems to appreciate.
For some time now it has had a companion.
A small, but nevertheless persistent weed has sprouted in its pot.
I did not weed it out, because it was little and brave and trying really hard, and I thought the elephant’s foot might be lonely, so I watered the weed as well. This sort of approach to horticulture is responsible for all of our front garden becoming completely impassable already, and we only planted it last year.
I was not quite sure what sort of a weed it was, although I have glanced at it a few times and wondered, without much interest. Guffy attacked the trailing bits of it once, poking holes in some of the leaves, and I felt sorry for it, because weeds can’t run away, so I tucked it up in the pot, out of her reach.
Then last week it flowered, small, rather pretty white flowers. This seemed like a very happy result, and I assured it that weed or no, it could stay where it was.
I was watering it this morning when I noticed, to my astonishment, a long, green protuberance where one of the flowers had been.
Close inspection revealed several more, about a dozen of them actually, and I realised that my weed was not a weed at all, but a sweet pepper bush, grown from a seed that must have come in with the compost when I dug out the heap outside and refilled the plant pot.
We eat lots of sweet peppers, so I think it is probably those and not chilli.
It doesn’t matter which it is, it is a very splendid outcome indeed, and I am feeling humbled by its determined persistence, what a brilliant thing to happen. Sweet peppers are perennial if they don’t get frosted, which it almost certainly won’t in my office, I do not like the cold any more than pepper plants do, so it will keep growing little baby peppers for ages.
I have run out of peppers tonight. I had to put celery in my taxi picnic instead. I would have preferred to put chocolate in it but I am still trying hard not to be portly, and really I am pushing my luck a bit with the burritos.
It has been a good day all round, actually, because I have at last managed to get on with the curtains, and indeed, have finished another pair. They are looking very Orient Expressy indeed, they are more of the blue velvet with the gold trim, and I am just starting on the tie-backs.
We are going to add thermal blinds as well, because we might go to cold places where curtains are just not enough of a barrier between us and the steely frosts of a bitter winter. I thought of Switzerland, but I suppose realistically Scotland is more likely, and I have been contemplating them with a furrowed brow for the last couple of days.
You can get mechanisms for Make Your Own Blinds on the mighty Internet, and so we have been investigating them curiously. I have never thought much about blinds before, we had some in the camper van when we bought it, but they were always a bit rubbish and in the end we hoofed them out.
These will not be rubbish. Mark has found an electric mechanism for them which will close the blinds over the telephone. I am not sure how you might do this, it seems a bit odd to telephone your blinds and explain that it is getting a bit chilly so would they please shut themselves, although I expect they will come with instructions. After all, nobody would ever have imagined Google in their television a few years ago, and now there he is, setting alarms for things in the oven and telling all of our secrets to his mates on Facebook, he is a shocking gossip.
I have attached a photograph of my new sweet pepper bush.
I am feeling very pleased indeed.
