"Fatal for a Fighting Soul"

I wanted to headline this something like Bosketto Botoxa but those who know told me it would be pounced on by the Google Alert rottweilers and on the Mayor's desk before noon. Loipon.

Tell you the truth, I set up the separate B-word blog so that there'd be a clear division between my chaste pure-mouthed Corfucian witterings and the vile planterie stuff that would inevitably spew from anything to do with that treadmill of futility I call gardening. (Washes mouth out and hoses down keyboard)

But is that not THE most wonderful photo up there? You don't know my Mum: 89 yrs old, artist and jardinière and bags of other stuff ... speaks her mind, or in the case up there, 'gestures' her mind. Very Greek, as well it might after 40 years.

There she is saying, "Well, I give up, have it your own way ..." but psst, she never gives up and they never will. That stalwart artisan who thinks he has just trounced the lower-than-low foreign lady has, in fact, just signed on to become her slave and liege man. He is done for.

I was going to say nothing but have been persuaded that the sheer hilarity and cruel humour of the situation MUST be shared.

People are also very polite about my ongoing foto album.

OK, I give in. I suppose I do detect a certain irony.

My wonderful tenacious talented Linnean-decorated maman agreed to "advise" on that scruff of prairie posing as the Bosketto Durrell Garden down at the Arts Café end of the old fort esplanade.

Well, 'advise' was the word used at the start of this whole thing - and it's all in the notes - but now it's clear what a tornado we have unleashed.

I mean - do read Maman's reports, which she hands me to type out and which I try not to censor more than decorum requires. Always at the back of my mind, I imagine the blog being read by the people mentioned therein.

What makes this such a wonderful Odd Couple arrangement is that my mother believes that everyone shares her love for gardening; I am a philistine botanophobe who shouts down her more extreme fantasies that anyone gives a fig about the garden past political gain.

And do you know what? Between us, we make a rarther good duo for smiting the Midian hosts.

It's the last thing I want to give into - but by God it's the sort of thing I'd read: ammanuensis of a gifted gardener ... dutifully typing everything that comes his way ... snaps whatever he's told to ... keeping his own sulky blog of how it looks from *his* side of the eyeballs. Plus of course, he is going to look after his momma despite her best efforts to die in harness.

Indeed, only the other evening she was countering my worries about her working herself to a Bosketto death over some blooming marigolds (and they are, damn them).

"But I thought you always said the ideal way for me to go was keeling over with secateurs in hand?"

"Yes, mum - but HERE! In the garden *you* created over 40 years, your faithful Sam whining and trying to prise the rake from your rigorising fingers.

HERE, not out there with municipal gardeners slouching around and some biker fuzz stuffing a fucking €80 parking ticket into your green wellies."

You have to admit it has potential.

But hark to this - word has it that the Mayor himself wants to do lunch to discuss where the project's going:

Place some stout carls at my mother's disposal

Get real about the whole operation.

I was going to shove some pics up but I really can't be bothered wasting time over gardenry ~ the best ones are here in the Feb 28 photos and I've chucked in some surreal 'blasted heath' creations to set the mood.