Travels with my Aunt

I’m outing myself as a Graham Green fan here. The consisting search for something more important, sincere, exciting in life that you find in all his main characters, combined with an underlying sense of loss and loneliness have always touched me.

Travels with my Aunt is one of the more light-hearted novels. It begins with the early-retired bank manager Henry Pulling meeting his rather glamorous aunt Augusta at his mother’s funeral. In the course of this first meeting he learns that his deceased mother had only adopted him, and the urn with her ashes is hilariously misused by Augustas much younger lover Wordsworth, who tries to hide marihuana in it.

As it turns out this first meeting marks a new beginning for Pulling, who has lead an absolutely regulated, boring life only highlighted by his love for dahlias, and who now, after the urn being confiscated by the police, joins his aunt on several  voyages, listening to her colourful stories of her life and lovers and being led by her towards a somewhat less regulated existence.

All in all this is an absolutely warm-hearted satire (if something like this exists), letting the reader smile at human eccentricities while enjoying the wonderfully grotesque reminiscences that are woven into the plot.

What now?

I’ve just noticed that I haven’t posted anything for ages, one reason being that I had my mind on different things. Too many of our friends and relatives had tough luck lately. I’ve learned about some nasty illnesses that I never heard the name of before, and I still wish I hadn’t.

Usually working in the garden helps me to relax and drive away dark thoughts. However, this year has been so dry that most of my work consisted of keeping the plants alive by watering. There was even hardly any weeding to do because  the weeds didn’t germinate. Or if they did, you needed a pickaxe to get them out.  Fortunately it rained a little last weekend but before that all the flowers and shrubs as well as the lawn looked rather grey than green. There isn’t a sadder sight than tomato plants that have lost all their leaves or huge sunflowers that let theirs hang down. So all in all it was as if the garden reflected my troubles.

So at the moment I’m not quite sure whether to keep this blog up or not. I’ve given myself until Christmas to find back into a rhythm of more regular postings, trying to find some more agreeable things to write about.

Getting in the Mood

You can really tell that winter is over when the animals are stirring. The other day Don wrote about bees trying to get into unopened snowdrops. I myself am more in the habit of observing bird life, but only this morning I found out that their song isn’t the only thing to go by as a short talk with my neighbour showed:

“Yesterday I heard the thrush sing for the first time this year. Did you hear that, too?” — “Well, they weren’t only singing in my garden. They were doing other things, as well.”

So if the birds are getting in the mood, this is a sure sign that winter is truly over.

Signs of Spring

Unlike last year we had a bit of real winter in the past weeks: some heavy frosts and even enough snow for the children to build snowmen and take their sleighs out.
When I look into the garden I find everything about four weeks backward compared to last year. The snowdrops have just started, some crocusses are showing a little colour, but that’s it so far. — Oh I’ve forgotten about the witch hazel and the cyclamen, but the’ve been blooming since January, and the cyclamen actually since Christmas.
Even if there is not much colour in my garden yet, I’m strongly convinced that spring is coming. First of all the fieldfares, which only show up in winter, seem to have left for their nesting places further north or east. Only after devouring every single berry and rosehip that still remained in the garden. And yesterday I heard the first cranes, which have come back from the south. Most of them only rest here until they travel further up north, but until they do so they make a lot of noise.

The Plights of Gardening

Fortunately we have had some rain last week so there is some fun in doing gardening work again. I don’t know how you get on in dry areas such as Texas or California, but I found that this drought we had from May to mid-June started getting on my nerves. Seeing lots of plants wither away, looking on a burned lawn already in May, trying to keep alive the strawberries and vegetables (who have remained in a bonsai state nevertheless), trying to save weakened plants from massive aphid attacks — all this was not very enjoyable. Therefore I didn’t feel like writing at all because who would like to read about the feelings of a depressed garden enthusiast?

For the roses, however, the weather has been perfect. The warmth has made them blossom early and with their deep roots they were not as dependent on regular watering as those plants with more shallow ones.

So almost to the end of June there was a fireworks of roses in my garden now only subdued by the recent rain that has caused quite a few blossoms to wilt. However, fresh raindrops on rose blossoms, is there anything more elegant than this?

Also, the rapeseed bug, a tiny black beetle usually feeding on rape blossoms, and a pest that has become resistant to almost all insecticides is bothering us again. However, it is not as bad as last year and the year before when you couldn’t go out wearing anything coloured white or yellow unless you wanted to be covered with little black bugs right way.

So for some reason there are never perfect conditions for gardening. It is either too cold or too hot, too dry or too wet, there are fungi or bugs or deer trying to live off your favourite plants — and still they always manage to come back up again. There is always something growing, flowering, flourishing, which is quite a miracle when you think what obstacles they are facing all the time.