RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32568, 30 March 1971, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

GREEN FINGERS

It is very nice to feel one is sufficiently highly regarded to be left ■ in complete and sole charge of someone else’s home while the owner and his wife are on a six-months tour overseas, but the responsibility can become enormous, for a conscientious sort of fellow. This spotless and handsome house was taken over by a young bachelor, and he applied himself to the task of keeping everything up to scratch with fanatical zeal. It was not merely a matter of clean and polish every day; he even turned his attention to the garden and the indoor plants, although he had a very modest reputation indeed, among his

friends, for his knowledge of things horticultural. But he seemed to have found the knack: the garden bloomed and blazed responsively, and the bunch inside prospered too. Except for one of them. While the others responded gaily to the daily watering and regular feeding, one of this collection of exotics simply sulked. Its bud, held on a delicate tendril, resolutely refused to open. The man in residence responded to this challenge—he bought expensive plant foods, carefully measured out the doses, and administered various nostrums daily. Still the plant did not improve and it began to

worry him. He began to think about it day and night; and once had a nightmare that it had died. He woke, shaking, about three in the morning and rushed out to give it an extra feed. Finally he took his problem to a friend, a man vastly knowledgeable about plants and the expert arrived that evening, carrying a little black bag containing, among other things, soil-acidity testing solutions. He peered at the plant, somewhat in the fashion of Dr Cameron, then shook his head sadly. “That plant," he said, “will never grow. You see, that plant is made of plastic.”