Gardens Beat Politics any Day
Gardeners and Farmers talk about the weather all the time. Small land holders dream of the rain and the sun and the hale and the wind. For twenty years, in my early adult life, I talked about politics, then like a bolt of lightening that comes out of the blue, I realised that the flowers and trees were much more reliable, trustworthy and generally better to live with than many politicians. That happy day changed my life and the living conditions of the loved people around me.
My conversation changed, my thoughts and manner became less volatile, I became attuned to the Natural causes, not the National causes and I became an easier person to live with. Maybe, more boring, more one tracked, less universal, I spoke of gentle and beautiful things - the babies and children in our family and our gardens, the birds that sing in the trees and the joy of the first Spring days. And without any doubt, I began to speak about the weather
But now the weather is turning the tables and is becoming political. No longer may the gardeners rely on Spring weather coming at the start of September in the Southern Hemisphere, or Summer on the first of December. Autumn may not arrive in the garden until nearly May. Our plants don't know which they are, Arthur or Martha, they become fooled by the arrival of warm weather in June and they wait in vain for the Spring rains to come in September only to receive them in December or not at all.
Ah! Fickle weather, how can we and our gardens trust you? What about all those folk who ring up the radio stations and tell the listeners that to pickle walnuts successfully, you must pick them on the 14th of December and then the next lady disputes this date and says to have any success, the correct date is the 16th of December. Are all our walnuts turning bitter after pickling? Do we do them a month earlier or a month later? And the tomato growers, who are fairly unanimous in declaring the only way to have juicy, red tomatoes is to plant after Hobart Show Day, the second Thursday in October, how to help them?. Do we change the date of the Royal Hobart Show? And if we change the date in 1999, what about the Year 2000 bug? Will that join forces with all the other bugs? NOW, how is that going to alter everything?
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