Much Ado about ... gardening :)

Weird two am dream involving dunes, a duck-billed platypus riding on a crocodile and a stray dolphin making a cameo appearance. No wonder I was wide awake trying to shake those images. Especially those teeth about to close on my leg! Eek!

At work it’s always fun to see the reaction of newcomers when they start grasping the management structure here, which is fully functioning on the authority side, but utterly devoid on the responsibility side. I’m always amazed just how few so-called professional entities have no grasp on the necessity of balancing authority with responsibility! I mean it is basic common sense: If I take the authority to make a decision, I am responsible for the consequences of my decision! Before I meander off into another rant-zone, let’s change the subject.

I sit here before this blank screen with a horde of topics zooming through my head, yet when I try to put some of that in print – I find myself stumped. I have some very strong views, yet on this blog I do not want to invite controversy, there’s enough brainless ranting all over Facebook, I’m here blogging as an escape from all that! To me, Facebook is a means of staying in touch with friends and family who are far away – and with me living on the southern most coast of Africa, you can’t get much further away! On Facebook I’m also friends with people I have never met, even people I don’t know from a bar of soap, as the saying goes. Yet quite a few of them have become friends, even though we have never met in person.

Long before Facebook there was ICQ. Anyone remember that? I met some amazing people there – and quite often found myself in several stimulating conversations at the same time! I suppose some of the people were nothing like they pretended to be, but some of the people I met online were exactly as they seemed, when I met them in real life. Twenty years ago, Chat and Chatrooms were often approached with the same atmosphere as pen-pals twenty years before that. Well, apart from the, shall we say ‘spicier’ atmospheres sought by many? Chat was an opportunity to have a live conversation with people from the other side of the world, getting to know different cultures, new ideas, or in my case, also re-connecting with my Home Country, Germany. There was still a one-on-one real interest getting to know individuals. I miss that sometimes, on Facebook nowadays it’s so much like shouting into the world ‘look at me, this is who I am’ without any interest in dialogue. It’s so much one-way communication, all about me, me me ... talking, shouting, selfie-promoting ... isolated in a shell of one. Some shout their pain, some bubble their delight – and too many simply forward empty memes.

And how is this blog different?  Well, yes, it’s me talking about me, so on that score no difference. The blog isn’t easy to find though, I don’t have a host of followers – just a few friends who read it. And that’s all it is about – for me to journal my life, reflect, share; and for friends, maybe even family, who don’t have the privilege of enjoying my company (could not resist that!) to get to know me; and those who do enjoy my company to get to know me a little better. There’s not much glamour or anything very special in my life – just an ordinary life. I’m not making a statement, nor is this a platform to convince anyone of my opinions, views or politics. Also, I’m not trying to paint a picture of me that’s untrue. I hope that anyone reading this, who does know me, will recognise the person they know. I’m happy with who I am – sure, there’s room for growth, but no need for a complete change! I did that once already, when I stopped drinking – that was necessary, believe me!

So, today I was asked, what do I do all evening, if I don’t go out? There was this image of a vast amount of time to fill doing … what? Well, take tonight for example. I left work at three, got home about twenty to four. As I walk down the path to my flat I see something yellow peeking through the mass of green leaves in my bed. Oh, look! This looks intriguing, it’s definitely going to be a different kind of flower! Sorry about the blurry photo, I only took the one. I'll try for a better one tomorrow.

I wander a bit further and look, another cosmos has opened!I turn around, the Nasturtiums seem to need some attention. There are quite a few yellow leaves, and they are trying to close up my path! I look up, and another tomato is ready to be picked! I take the tomato and go off towards the stairs. Peek around the corner – yes, my neighbour is sitting on the porch knitting! She comes down and I offer her my latest tomato, I’ve got several ripening upstairs. We chat and she tells me that she wants to place one or two diamond-succulents in our new rockery, just to see how they’ll look. We part to meet in the rockery in a few minutes. I go upstairs, switch on the PC, have a smoke, get my camera and come back down.

She’s placed a few succulents already – the sun is catching them beautifully, so I snap a few photos.

She has another one in her hand she’d like a bit nearer the fence, but she can’t get there – I’m taller, so following her instructions, I dig a hole and place her plants. More pictures. 

Then we go and take a tour to look at what’s new in my garden, we discuss what kind of flower the yellow one could turn out to be – no clue, yet! Her cat comes to join us while we walk around inspecting what I need to do, and what’s new in the garden. Then I start trimming, cleaning, weeding while my neighbour is happily bringing more cuttings and placing them in our rockery! I stay outside, working until it gets too dark, while my neighbour moves her car, then goes inside to bake her own birthday cake. I take a few photo’s of the sunset.

Then sit down to my game for about fifteen minutes. Then I attend to my pot plants, look if any parasites have returned, then water them. Sit down, play a bit, go through game-fellowship messages, scroll through Facebook and it’s nearly seven. That’s when I write this blog. And now it’s nearly half eight – it may look like I’m just babbling, but there is some thinking involved. And now I’m going to select and compress the photo’s I took, then publish the blog. Yes, I still write it in a word document, then copy and paste it for publication. By the time I'm finished, it's eight.

After that, I cook dinner, eat, bath, play a bit more, maybe chat, and it’ll be nine. Time for bed.