little old lady – Deborah Makarios

I’ve always liked the idea of being a gardener. I took Horticulture in the fourth form, and Agriculture/Horticulture in the sixth form. I even toyed with the idea of becoming a landscape architect. Gardening is a classic Little Old Lady enthusiasm, and an area in which I have always felt I fell short of true Little Old Lady-hood.

Because when it comes down to it, I have seldom ever actually gardened, and I think the reason for this lies in my childhood. We moved house frequently, so while there was always gardening to be done, we seldom hung around long enough to see the fruits of our labour. In fact, when I had to grow a garden for school (back in my primary days) I had to grow it at a friend’s house, so as to ensure continued access.

The result of all this was that I subconsciously filed gardening under ‘thankless toil’ and never did it unless I had some particular reason to – such as the vegetable garden I grew in the fourth form. My excitement when I saw something I’d planted actually produce knew no bounds. I even dragged my mother out to look at them when she got home. I don’t think she understood why I was so excited about pea plants producing peas, but she duly admired them all the same.

My enthusiasm – particularly as far as weeding was concerned – was rather dented by that same garden, however. While getting down to weed’s eye level to wreak havoc on the little pests, I discovered that weed’s eye view is also really-quite-large-frog’s-eye-view. I don’t know which of us had the worst fright.

So without anything much to motivate me, I seldom gardened; and my occasional bursts of enthusiasm were not enough to make the garden thrive. Such enthusiasm as I had was dampened by the regularity with which the weeds returned and the seeds I’d planted failed to grow. Now, however, being the sole lady of this little demesne, I find that my attitude to gardening is slowly changing.

Instead of the source of unremitting toil which will never render any return, I am beginning to look on the garden as something which is mine to nurture, and which will repay my efforts on its behalf with Good Things – food, and pleasant scents, and leafy sun-dappled shade.

So I have started to garden, little by little. I have dipped my toe into pruning, weeding, planning, repotting, planting – including some seeds which actually sprouted (magic beans from my mother). We’ve even eaten some of the produce of our garden (mint, nasturtiums, redcurrants and lemons). And yet, into this nascent Eden has crept a snake: the accursed Convolvulus, or bindweed.

The Caped Gooseberry has been waging daily war on it for weeks (my hero!), and yet the evil flourishes. “Have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don’t let him have a fibre in the shade, if you do he’ll turn himself t’other side up and be as green as a leek in two days,” as Thoreau observed in Walden.

Convolvulus is like the plant version of the Black Death: even a tiny bit of infection left behind can turn into a full-blown epidemic in a matter of days. If it was edible, we could feed the world with it. As Dave Barry said of crabgrass, “it can grow on bowling balls in airless rooms, and there is no known way to kill it that does not involve nuclear weapons.” And unlike bubonic plague, its victims don’t have a 50% chance of survival. If they aren’t rescued when the Tendrils of Relentless Destruction coil around them, they will be gradually choked to death. It is the Boa Constrictor of the plant world, and it grows a good deal faster.

And so I have been moved to compose this comminatory sonnet, addressed to the vile midnight strangler that creeps about my garden.

How I do loathe thee! Let me count the ways:
I loathe thee to the depth and breadth and height
Thy tendrils reach, and roots spread out of sight
Which all within their choking grasp embrace.
I loathe thee with the effort of each day’s
Repeated work, as my man fights the fight.
I loathe thee, as do all who see aright;
I loathe thee with the fullness of my phrase.
I loathe thy hypocritical false flower,
As with pure white thou seek’st to fool the eye;
I loathe thy strength, thy killing wield of power;
Thy weakness, using others to grow high.
And so my curse, from roots to usurped tower:
To twine about thyself, and, strangling, die.

with a nod to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
and No.43 of the Sonnets from the Portuguese (they aren’t)

I am not the sort of woman who says she loves her shoes. But there is a pair for which I have a certain affection. They’re not Jimmy Choos or Manolos or Louboutins or anything like that. They’re thin black leather with a low heel – in fact, they look exactly like this.
Except older and more battered.

I used to react badly to people describing them as granny shoes. Until one day I happened to be in the shoe shop when a lovely LOL (Little Old Lady) somewhere around eighty was buying exactly this style. Well, fair enough. You don’t get to be eighty without knowing a decent shoe when you see one.

But what really got me is what she said as she handed them over to the sales-lady to be scanned. “This pair will see me out.” The sales-lady, naturally, made tut-tut-of-course-not noises, but thinking about it, the LOL was probably right. She was old enough that her shoes likely didn’t get devastating amounts of wear, and they are really good shoes.

I bought my pair for work in early 2008 because I was on my feet for hours and the pascals were killing me. They’ve seen a lot of wear since, having been my only decent pair of shoes for at least half that time. In order to keep them going, some small mends have been necessary. (Cobblers: Cheaper Than Buying New Shoes.) But on my last visit the cobbler told me the end was fast approaching.

Mended, they’d see me through the winter. Maybe approaching next winter. But sooner or later, the only thing to do, he said, was to go shopping.
My first thought was “what? but they’re only six and a half years old!” My second was “that’s worked out at about 50c a week – not too bad”. And then I thought “I could get some brown shoes” (for reasons which will soon become apparent). And then (some time later) I thought “do I really need another pair of shoes?”

I already have:
three pairs of boots – black leather; rubber (for wet); sheepskin (for freezing)
one pair of black walking shoes
one pair of black canvas sand-shoes
one pair of blue low-heeled shoes

one pair of black high heels (worn only with evening dress, i.e. about once every year or so)
and one pair of ivory satin boots (which get even less wear than the evening heels. What can I say? The sheepskin boots didn’t really go with my wedding dress).
And of course for casual summer wear you can’t go past the classic rubber jandal, which handily doubles as a swat for creepy-crawlies.

That’s nine different kinds of footwear, not counting the classic black pair rapidly approaching the day of their demise.
Do I need another pair of shoes? Probably depends on your definition of need. And unless you have a fairly liberal definition, the answer is probably no. Would I like another pair of shoes? Probably maybe?

As items in my wardrobe wear out I’m trying to replace them with things that actually suit me (revolutionary concept, I know) – more brown, green, and other ‘natural’ colours. I could do the same with my shoes – but it might make more sense to wait til attrition has finished altering my wardrobe, and then look for a suitable pair.
Attrition might have further altered my footwear collection by then too – after all, no matter how good the shoes I buy, I can’t yet say “they’ll see me out.”

Tag: little old lady

Convolvulus: A Commination

Muse on Shoes