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More dead chillies
28 April 2006
Gah, bah, humbug! Never live with children or animals...
We'd been out in the back yard, Barry and I: I was pruning the lavender, while he did foolish-young-cat things that mostly had to do with bouncing a lot and trying to kill birds that were far, far out of his reach. Much fun was had by all.
Then we came indoors (he not being trusted outside by himself, because he'll be over that wall like a shot and far away before I know it), and I came up here to do some work. You know, that stuff that I simply have to do, rapidly and in vast quantities, in order to meet the impossible deadline? My fingers were poised, my mind was prepared - and there was a noise as of great catastrophe occurring, out on the stairs there. Not for the first time.
The first time was when he knocked over & assassinated three of my surviving chilli plants from last year (it was a not-altogether-successful experiment, to see how many I could keep through the winter for a second cropping year: of the fifteen originals, nine still had a breath of life, a leaf or two, despite constant attack by greenfly. Then Barry came, and then there were six, and a great mess on the carpet...).
This time? This time it was the other, the higher windowsill; and another three plants gone (these are big plants, in big pots; it's not deliberate, he just takes flying leaps from carpet-level and then can't control his flying kilograms - a ballistic missile, indeed, in the full sense of being guided only at the start of its course), only these had fallen from a greater height with more energy behind them, and so had strewn themselves and their contents all the way down the stairs.
So I have gathered up the compost for reuse, which has necessarily involved a degree of trampling to and fro through the wreckage; and now I have to go and hoover half the house. Thankfully, Himself is very seriously frightened of the hoover; it makes him go and hide in a very hidey place. That'll larn him...
© Chaz Brenchley 2006
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.