RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 6, 2 October 1937, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current

Events

(By Kickshaws.!

The next sign of eternal friendship and love is going to be Hitler’s moustache on Mussolini. ♦ » *

The principle of Government control of our banks is closely connected u Ith the interest in the thing.

We note that, to the angler, fishing is a high art. An art, we understand, closely akin to that of the great romancers.

Now that spring has infested the air, Kickshaws notes repeated references by bishops, and others who employ gardeners, regarding the fact that there is nothing more joyous than employing our leisure hours gardening. It must be admitted that there is some pleasure in toying with a weed or two after a gardener has done the real work. It is probably just such an occupation that made some poet or other burst forth into those “God wots” about a garden. In fact, the poet in question was careful not to mention the word “gardening” at all, l>eing content to remark, “A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot I” The authoi of this is, indeed, content to pass on to the “rose plot” but makes no mention of aphis. .It is aphides that make the plot. The plot is to devise some method to defeat these creatures which might well be taught something about birthcontrol. Totally unaided bj’ husbands, these brutes spoil the rose plot. One aphis can produce in six months a family that weighs more than the entire human population of the world. In the meantime, the gardener takes on his own shoulders the responsibility of restricting the aphis in its family affairs. Armed with tobacco juice and other tear-making chemicals, the gardener spends many joyous hours in his rose plot.

As for the “fringed pool” that all the best gardens should have, the blunt truth is that unless they be covered with kerosene they prove a lovesome spot for mosquitoes, sandflies and God wot what else. Fringed pools that are sprayed with kerosene refuse to grow anything. Kickshaws therefore suggests that the fringed pool be abandoned, or, if included in the joyous pastime of gardening, it should consist of n discarded wash-tub with a hole in the bottom through which the surplus mosquito population may be let out from time to time. The ferned grot is another matter. The first problem is to obtain a grot. Seed merchants unequipped with the best dictionaries may imagine that a grot is a particle, fragment or atom. This is not the whole story. The better dictionaries agree thaf a “grot” is also a cave. It is not always easy to acquire a cave. In fact, the joyous hours spent excavating a cave may result in trouble with the council about a building permit, because it does not yet appear to have been decided whether a building [>ermit is required for a grot. Anyway, a grot is an excellent spot in which to store home-brew.

It seems that, having acquired a rose plot, a fringed pool and a grot, the gardener may sit down and wait for peace. He will soon be disillusioned. The first thing to appear beside the fringed pool will be a particularly hardy type of couch grass. This will ensure that the gardener, not so joyous, will have a life task. > After the tenth year of removing couch grass some of the less ardent gardeners have been known to forsake gardening for the office. Eventually watercress will appear in the fringed pool, and that will be the end of the pool, which will be all fringe and no pool. The rose plot is another matter. Apart from the extreme probability that white roses will grow where red should appear, there are 4763 different types of diseases that attack roses and 17,456 different types of weeds that flourish in plots. This will ensure that the gardener’s son will not be without something to do in his old age. But this is not the end, because, after all, no enthusiastic gardener would be content with a grot, pool, and plot. The married gardener will be expected to supply the “house” with vegetables.

Kitchen gardens are, perhaps, the most joyous aspect of this most joyous hobby. The idea of a kitehen garden is to plant one shilling’s worth of seeds. Prop them up with five shillings’ worth of props. Manure them with six shillings’ worth of fertiliser. Spend the equivalent of ten pounds’ worth of personal labour and produce one and sixpence worth of peas, and a marvellous crop of raurlki for the canary next door. The wise gardener reserves the rest of his kitchen garden for the cultivation of white butterflies. These dainty little creatures may easily be bred on cabbages and other plants qf this type. One may sit and watch them hour after hour in their joyous flight while listening to the weeds growing and calculating whether one can afford a man to do the garden next year. About this time the summer drought arrives. Everything that matters withers in the garden, leaving a type of thistle and a breed of dandelion that apparently has an ancestral tree that once grew in the Sahara.

Kickshaws does not wish to discourage gardeners from rushing in where rakes would fear to hoe. There are some very joyous things about a garden. There is nothing more soothing than the sound of someone else mowing the grass. A second-rate joy may even be had from listening to the follow next door mowing his grass. A joy even more sweet is to visit the newly-acquired house and land bought by a friend and remind him how large the garden is and. how much work it will require. Perhaps the most joyous thing of all is to spend one’s time in somebody else’s garden where armies of gardeners garden from dawn to night, at the standard rate of a prime minister’s salary In the days of Wolsey. Moreover, there Is nothing more pleasing than listening tn the enjoyment of a multitude of bees busy about their duties in a well-kept garden in which one has not done a spade’s turn of work and never will. It is perhaps for that reason that many cities such as Wellington give us “keep off the grass” gardens in which we may be joyous at the expense of the ratepayers.

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Ferned grot— The veriest school . Of pence: nnd yet the fool Contends that God is not — Not God! In gardens! When the eve is cool ? Nay, but I have a sign: ’Ti s verv sure God walks in mine. —T. E. Brown.