Why we garden and grow to flowering size, is something I've never really thought about before being asked why we keep planting seeds even when there is a good chance that one won't be around to see them flower.
For some reason, this stuck in my mind overnight. The fundamental question of how this insidious disease, growing plants; took hold invading the very fabric of one's finances and expectations is for this gardener a very interesting foundation thought.
By which I so simply mean, when in me did this take root? I vaguely remember visiting my Nanna who always gardened, actually both my Nannas gardened.
My Newcastle one mainly grew practical plants, with the odd splash of colour. Sitting on her front verandah, looking out across the green cement to the letter box, the only living thing was a frangipani, severely pruned to look neat. Out the back was an endless vegetable garden and several fruit trees. I mainly enjoyed the fruits from her citrus, which always seemed to be heavy with fruit.
My Rose Bay Nanna on the other hand, grew an amazing array of exotic things, all of which looked as though they had come from a movie set. Hollywood musicals were big when I was young; this was before television.
Looking back with hindsight, some of the things which filled my child's imagination were bulbs. So perhaps this is where my first subconscious fascination took root?
(Sorry to be so cathartic in public.)
I truly don't know.
What I do remember most vividly are the giant blue bulbs bordering the back patio. I now know these to be Worsleya. The scents which filled my nostrils firing heady imaginations must have been members of the Crinum family. Nanna had a shade house of wondrous smells all emanating from tall, well they towered over me at the time; spikes of pink and white head-size flowers.
At the back of her pots there was a neat vegetable garden, which had the usual herbs of the day planted along with little men, as I seem to remember her calling them, which would flower when the rains came.
On reflection now, I know that the changing rainbow guard of her vegetable garden must have been Zephyranthus and Habranthus, often known as rainlilies.
Yes, it must have taken root with my Rose Bay Nanna, this endless fascination with flowering bulbs; it has only taken me fifty years to come to this realisation.
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