Talking Point with Vicky Turrell: 'They are not what I expected...'
Something has gone wrong. Last year in September I planted two bowls of bulbs and left them in the garage, visiting occasionally to water them. Well, I have been telling everyone that one set of bulbs is growing really fast. They are already six inches high and big buds with crumpled petals are swelling at an alarming rate. But they are not what I expected.
The packet I kept with the bowl shows purple tulips, perfect as a contrast for our pale walls of the new house. How good they would look, a real artistic touch, I thought. But they are not showing one drop of colour. They are cream and will be hidden against the light background.
The hole was hidden as well. Perfectly camouflaged. It was full of water and you would not know it was there. We went in with a bang and luckily, we were not moving fast but it was still a shock as we dropped and we did not expect it.
We thought that the roads would be fine after extensive work last year. The following week the hole was worse and there were five damaged cars on the side. The hole had got deeper. I checked the government website, and there was a report. The trouble is you have to know who to report to. In this case it was the council. On a bigger road it could have been highways, it is not an easy matter.
But thank goodness someone did report it on the internet.
‘Dangerous pothole…burst my tyre,’ wrote the person making the report. It really was dangerous, but what else can you do other than wait for the council? Then someone had a good idea, they put up a huge homemade sign saying ‘Hole’ with a bright red arrow pointing downwards. I am not sure if that is the right thing to do but I am sure they saved some cars and perhaps lives. Sometimes you have to take the best action you can. Luckily the council soon came and made a quick repair. Potholes are back again and seem to be breeding.
On a much smaller matter and scale we have a snowdrop out. If we were still at the cottage, I would not dream of writing this because we had hundreds growing in the woodland and orchard. Every year there seemed to be more and more they certainly were increasing, leaving swathes like roadways of white, twisting and turning making a way through the trees. But now in our new garden we have only this one memory snowdrop, brought from the cottage garden. Let’s hope it breeds like the potholes because snowdrops are better than car-drops!
