Pinky's Garden of Eden

                       

Gardening is not one of the main interests in our lives. The only horticultural fact I know is how to tell the difference between a plant and a weed; a plant is easier to pull out of the ground. 
Scotto sometimes gets artistic with the hedges out the front but he’s not exactly a ‘Don Burke’. 

Except for the pool garden our backyard is covered in stamped concrete. Low maintenance is the key concept.

When Hagar has spent his pay packet and is desperate for moolah, he will agree to mow the front yard for twenty bucks. Mind you, he refuses to use a catcher and doesn’t include whipper-snipping the lawn edges in that fee. It literally takes Hagar ten minutes to complete the job as he runs up and down the yard at high speed leaving a mess of grass cuttings in his wake.

The house I lived in with my ex-husband had a huge rainforest type garden which needed considerable maintenance and was entirely unsuitable for two non-gardeners. 

He was constantly out in the garden with the machete, slashing Bougainvillea vines and violently tussling with the thorny pest. The barbed creeper was his arch nemesis and he complained acrimoniously about it. 

The garden was a great adventure playground for the kids but there was a big drop from the verandah onto jagged rocks in the garden below. With five small children running around I was concerned about the possibility of one of them toppling over the railing. 

A friend, Penny had employed a group of Salvadoran landscapers to do some renovations and she recommended them to me.

It wasn’t long before I came up with one of the most outrageously expensive and stupid schemes I’ve ever concocted. 

With great expectations and monetary outlay, the Salvadorans were engaged to build a wide monolithic structure using stone pitching. The resulting platform would safely ensure that if one of the kids happened to plummet from the verandah there would only be a three foot drop. 

For six weeks, like a demented high priestess, I oversaw the hard-working men wheel a profusion of rocks to the construction site. 

About half way through production I started to question the feasibility of the exercise. Maybe I should have merely blocked off access to the railings? 
In the interim, the modern equivalent of a misshapen Mayan temple had begun to take shape. 

Regrettably the final result was a hideous eyesore. I didn’t have the heart to tell Carlos and Mauricio after all their hard work but it was a truly monstrous carbuncle on the landscape of our garden. The Royal Horticultural Society would not be knocking on my door for tips any time soon. 
And one day Jonah still managed to fall off the verandah the long way.

Meanwhile my then-husband, wanting to contribute to the garden makeover, had been busy buying new plants at the nursery.

He proudly showed me his half-price spoils.

“You do realise those are bougainvillea.” I commented sadly.

Should We Smack Our Kids?

If the media is to be believed, there seems to be two trains of thought on this topic. 
Team A, who believe that if it is illegal to assault an adult in any fashion it goes to say that it’s criminal to strike a child and Team B, who believe that the recent spates of youth discord and crime are evidence that a decline in corporal punishment has led to this errant behaviour.

Even though I can count the incidents on one hand I must confess I was not averse to delivering a short smart smack on the bum if it was warranted. 

For example; if one of the kids was about to run into heavy traffic, or the time Thaddeus nearly bit his brother Jonah’s nose off, leaving a ring of teeth marks around the area that persisted for three weeks.

My parents (apart from the time I created a tsunami in the bathroom and flooded the house) never smacked me as far as I can remember. The truth is I was exactly the sort of kid that may have deserved a flogging.There were several instances in my childhood where my behaviour undeniably befitted a smack on the bum. 

The first occasion I recall was when I was about six years old. My mother, my three year old sister Sam and I were visiting my Grandmother. Grandma was showing us an exquisite friendship ring that had recently been bequeathed upon my Aunt by an ardent suitor. 

Just like Gollum from ‘Lord of the Rings’ I was mesmerized by this sparkling prize and wanted to make it my ‘precious’. 

Sneaking into my Aunt’s bedroom I pilfered the trinket and hid it in my knickers. When we got home, realizing the coveted item could never be revealed in public, I secreted it behind the curtains in the living room. 

About an hour later visitors arrived and while my parents were entertaining them, my sister (the snitch), discovered the ring and took it to my mother. 

As they were busy with their friends I was sent to my room to be dealt with later. For the next half an hour I relentlessly screamed my lungs out in fearful anticipation of what was to come. Eventually the discomfited guests went home and Dad came into my room. 

“Why are you screaming?” he enquired softly. 

He gave me a long, sincere talk about the wickedness of stealing. Is that it? I thought.

The second instance I recollect was when I was about nine and it was my sister’s birthday. There were two presents I yearned for at this age and no matter how much I badgered Mum and Dad they never materialized. 

One was a horse. I wanted to be National Velvet and own a horse called King. The other was a camera. 

Fairly confident that my parents would never yield to my earnest entreaties for a horse I concentrated my efforts on petitioning for a camera. Years of birthdays and Christmases passed with no success.

“Film processing is too expensive Pinky,” they’d lecture, “Wait until you grow up and get a job.”

When my sister, Sam, was gifted with a camera on her seventh birthday my jealousy was palpable. Chucking the biggest tantrum, I sulked and complained for the entire day and well into the evening. 

I ruined my sister’s birthday with my virulent resentment. I probably should have been given a stinging slap on the derriere and sent to my room. 

The third occasion I remember was one morning when my family was preparing to leave to attend a dog show. Mum and Dad bred poodles at that stage and my father had been up since a sparrow’s fart washing, blow drying, grooming and meticulously clipping the two dogs to within an inch of their life. 

I was in the garden when I made the discovery. 

Months before I had found a dead toad in the gutter. As a ‘science’ experiment I had put it in a glass jar and concealed it in the flower bed. 

On this particular morning I found the glass jar and excitedly noticed that the toad had completely liquefied. Taking the lid off the jar I breathlessly raced into my mother to show her. 

“Get that out of the house Pinky!” she shrieked. “It stinks! Get rid of it!” 

It was time to leave and the immaculately spruced pooches jumped into the car on their way to fame and glory. 

“What’s that stink?” demanded my father. It was an overpowering, sickening smell that had everyone in the car dry retching. It was the dogs. 

“Where did you pour that jar Pinky?” gagged my mother. 

I'd poured it in the garden and the dogs, detecting the lovely aroma of decomposed amphibian flesh, had hedonistically rolled around and smothered their powder-puffed bodies in it. 

We didn’t make the dog show that day, but I was in the dog house big time.

Pinky's Guide to the Birds and the Bees.

When I was nine years old I decided I was never getting married. My favourite cousin, Cheryl (who was about three years older than me) and I were visiting our Grandmother. We were sitting on the front stairs of the fibro house watching Grandma’s sausage dog labouring along the path about to drop a litter of puppies. The poor thing’s stomach was dragging on the ground.

“Do you know where the puppies are going to come out of?” asked Cheryl furtively.

“Of course I do!” I retorted knowledgably. My parents had bred cocker spaniels and I’d seen my fair share of puppies being born. “They come out of the dog’s bum.” 

“No they don’t!” scoffed Cheryl. The come out of the number one hole.”

“That’s stupid!” I countered. “How could they squeeze out of that little hole.”

“It stretches,” she replied and added mysteriously, “and do you know how the puppies get inside?”


Now this question had never really crossed my mind. I had always assumed babies and puppies just randomly grew inside their mother’s stomachs. And so my informative cousin Cheryl, proceeded to enlighten me in graphic detail exactly how babies get into their mummy’s tummies.

I didn’t believe a word the lying fibber said. It was way too far fetched. 

As soon as I got home I confronted my mother.

“Mum, Cheryl said babies come out of ladies’ number one holes. They come out the bum don’t they?”

My mother blanched, “Ask your father when he comes home.” she wheezed.

My query had seemed to elicit an interesting reaction from my mother. Now I was extremely curious and dying for Dad to get home.

I challenged him the minute he walked in the door. So while my mother cooked the steak and three veg in the kitchen; Dad got out the medical book he’d been saving for this occasion and proceeded to technically explain sexual intercourse, menstruation, gestation and birthing. 

I don’t think I had ever before or have ever since, listened to my father so intently.

The next day I trotted off to school armed with a plethora of exciting information I couldn’t wait to deliver to all and sundry.

Surrounded by my nine year old friends at lunchtime, I regaled them with a revealing expose of what their parents got up to behind closed doors, complete with illustrative diagrams.

“That’s disgusting,” cried one of my appalled friends, “My parents would never do that!”

Two of the girls couldn’t stop crying and had to be sent home and my teacher never seemed to like me much after that day.


Please comment below on how you found out about the birds and bees or similar stories. I'd love to hear them!

Valentine's Day or Smellentine's Day- it can stink if you're single!

Poked my nose in this fridge this afternoon and what did I see? Mmmmmmm… chilled bottle of Moet & Chandon bought by Scotto for Valentine’s Day. 

Nice!

Much better than a bunch of flowers, methinks. At least, unlike a bunch of flowers, I can share it with him.

It’s a moot point that Valentine’s Day is usually esteemed more highly in the female of the species’ diaries than of the males. 

I can pretty much count on my nineteen year old son Hagar, shiftily snaking up to me later on this afternoon wanting to borrow money. He will have forgotten about Valentine’s Day, spent his pay packet already and need to buy his girlfriend something if he wants to keep in sweet with her. 

I’ve already taken the cash out of my wallet and hidden it so I can cry poor when he comes-a-begging.

I must acknowledge there have been many forlorn and fruitless Valentine’s Days in the questionable history of my 'love life'. 

There were many years when I would be the only poor mug to not have a gorgeous bouquet delivered to the work place and that was even when I had a boyfriend! I'd sit there gushing over all the bunches of roses sent to other girls with a face as green as the Granny Smith, Eve passed to Adam all those years ago.

I recall once, when I was about twenty-five and forlornly single, sitting on the veranda with my mother and twenty-two year old sister, Sam. 

None of us had received any professions of admiration in the form of a floral arrangement and our optimistic anticipation was drying up. Sam and I (as it was five o’clock and the florists were about to knock off duty) were feeling a little depressed, deflated and disappointed.

Unexpectedly a car shunted noisily up the hill. 

Was it coming to our house? Could it possibly be?

It parked in our driveway. 

Oh my God! It had a florist sign on it! Who could this be for? 

Butterflies in our tummies and nervous, superficial tittering ensued. 

Like the two ugly step-sisters from Cinderella we effused, 

“The flowers are probably for you, Mum!” 

 “They won’t be for me! "

"Probably just Dad sending you flowers, Mum!” 

Neither of us really believing this to be true and hoping against all hell the single, perfect, glorious rose headed up the path was for one of us. 

"Who could it be sending me love in a cylinder?" I mused. "A secret admirer perhaps?".
My fantasies ran away with my logic.
"Maybe it was that bloke from the service station I’d been eyeing off. But how would he know my address?... Actually how would he even know my name?"


No... 

The cheesy, cheap-looking rose in a plastic cylinder was a delivery for our stupid brother Damo, who wasn’t even home to receive the object of devotion and was doubtless blissfully unaware it was Valentine’s Day.

The moral of the story?
A rose by any other name stinks.