canny granny

When you need an Umbrella

Well I’m certainly pleased to have a frog in my garden, she may keep the blasted gastropods from returning. Drop in and say hello to my tenant ribbiticus, (in the rent-my-blog over to the right there) it’s her birthday. She didn’t come down in the last shower

Plenty of other frogs came down in the last shower - or the one before that.

Throughout history, there have been tales of raining frogs. These stories, as crazy as they may seem, are apparently real events.

In 1873, Scientific American reported that Kansas City, Missouri was blanketed with frogs that dropped from the sky during a storm.

Minneapolis, Minnesota was pelted with frogs and toads in July, 1901. A news item stated: “When the storm was at its highest… there appeared as if descending directly from the sky a huge green mass. Then followed a peculiar patter, unlike that of rain or hail. When the storm abated the people found, three inches deep and covering an area of more than four blocks, a collection of a most striking variety of frogs… so thick in some places [that] travel was impossible.”

The citizens of Naphlion, a city in southern Greece, were surprised one morning in May, 1981, when they awoke to find small green frogs falling from the sky. Weighing just a few ounces each, the frogs landed in trees and plopped into the streets. The Greek Meteorological Institute surmised they were picked up by a strong wind. It must have been a very strong wind. The species of frog was native to North Africa.

As long as the passing breeze doesn’t pick up any snails

I think it may be the bathroom

Getting out of my bath this morning I felt a little dizzy, I think it’s the spots combined with the squares that throw me off kilter.

My Council Home Help girl has been nagging me about the colour scheme.

I suspect she’s an aging hippy and wants to bring in a phalanx of potplants to steam up my mirrors and glossy surfaces. (It’s the undercurrent of ancient patchouli oil that gives her away)

You can never trust an old hippie. Their morals have always been a little too loose for my liking. Nothing wrong with playing guitars in the desert and dressing like an impoverished 19th century peasant, but I believe they suffer drug flashbacks.

I can say in all honesty that I’ve never had a flashback from Bex Powders.

Which reminds me, I’d better make sure the bathroom cabinet is stocked.

Money saving tips

On the television earlier tonight, I watched a woman in a yellow frock giving out money saving tips. How can you take anyone wearing a yellow frock seriously? Even Imelda Marcos wouldn’t be caught dead in one.

Anyhow, her money saving tips are along the lines of “Take your lunch to work” and “See a movie on a week night”. I’ve got better advice. Eat less and stay in.

Was God a Gardener?

I had a serious confrontation with a gang of gastropods this morning.

This is not the first time that we have run into problems. First off, I don’t like ‘em. I don’t like snails or any of their numerous cousins and assorted kinfolk. That said, I realise they have a right to exist in their own appalling little world as I have in my own, and I’m prepared to look the other way, merely wrinkling my nose with fastidiousness, when they ooze across my path.

But they can keep their ugly stomach-feet out of my herbs!

I’ve done my best. I have made a safe spot for them, a refuge, a haven hidden behind a particularly ugly clump of agapanthus, with a couple of old beer cans hidden under the leaves, some mossy overhung mini-boulders and a fat wad of newspaper. Gastropod heaven. If they would just stay there we could co-exist peacefully.

This morning I found a half dozen of the slimy things in the last of my tomatoes. Ingrates. Perhaps the heat of the last few days addled my brain, because I lashed out at the whole lot of them in fury. I shrieked at them. “I told you never to come in here. Don’t you know who I am? I am the Master Gardener, the Great Mother, I am She. I am God!”.

I picked them all up, threw them in a shoe box and carried them around to the back lane where I deposited them in the middle of the cobblestones. They are evicted. They are expelled. I wash my hands of them.

Sitting down with a soothing glass of sherry to calm myself, still shaking from the trauma, I started thinking.

Was God was a Gardener?