[Solo Episode] Bread for all, and roses too
Tales of horticultural sin and floral redemption featuring Salvia, Nepeta, Carl the Murderous Gardener, Gypsophila and Hemerocallis.
https://ko-fi.com/bendark
Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit https://www.hatchards.co.uk/book/orwells-roses/rebecca-solnit/9781783785520
Husbandry by Isabel Bannerman https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/husbandry/isabel-bannerman/9781914902949
The Grove by Ben Dark https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-grove-a-nature-odyssey-in-19-1-2-front-gardens-ben-dark/5044771?ean=9781784727413
Episode breakdown
[00:00:20] The episode discusses the popularity of the ornamental cherry tree, particularly the Kanzan cultivar, and its rise in popularity throughout the 20th century. Ben briefly mentions his recent writing on lawns and their place in the Gardening World.
[00:07:48] Heinous garden blunders include buying cheap plants from a supermarket. Reading about George Orwell's Woolworths roses.
[00:16:05] The author had trouble with overcrowded Gypsophila elegans seedlings and shares their experience with propagation. They also discuss the fraught etiquette of giving plants as gifts and their own propagation progress with London pride (Saxifraga x urbium and Nepeta 'Walkers Low.'
[00:22:33] Ben cuts back ivy for more light and space but the result is ugly, needs to go completely bare. Ivy on a wall needs constant cutting to maintain modern look, better to hide bulky stems in a small hedge.
[00:24:23] Archaeobotany and the use of box hedges in Roman Britain. Recommendations for reading on garden history and a call to support the podcast.
Transcript
Now you've got a gardener you personally dislike. So what?
Speaker:You don't have to like your gardener. As long as he does a good
Speaker:job and your wife's happy, forget it's.
Speaker:Hello and welcome to another episode of
Speaker:Dear Gardener. I'm broadcasting to you from Copenhagen
Speaker:in the week of Prunes Kansan. We are
Speaker:at the high point of that quintessentially suburban
Speaker:cherry trees, blossoming. I was out for a run
Speaker:on Wednesday morning with a friend who is
Speaker:not from our world, is from a world far
Speaker:removed from that of horticulture, someone who cares more about defense policy
Speaker:and serious things like that. And even he noticed
Speaker:them and was able to ask, my goodness, what are those trees?
Speaker:It's a penetrating kind of
Speaker:plant, something that can enter the head of even
Speaker:the most plant blind. And for that I love it.
Speaker:I think that today this
Speaker:podcast is going to be slightly bookish because I have
Speaker:been reading as much as I have been gardening,
Speaker:and for that reason I beg to be
Speaker:slightly indulgent and begin with a reading in
Speaker:honor of the Week of Prunes Kanzan from my
Speaker:own book, in which I discuss this tree a bit of context.
Speaker:I'm writing about London, and specifically about
Speaker:the trees of London, and wondering why
Speaker:on earth London plain is the emblematic tree
Speaker:of the city, when actually, if you look at the tree surveys, if you look
Speaker:at the work done by the great London authority,
Speaker:the plain tree is nothing. The tree of the city is the
Speaker:ornamental cherry, the pruners.
Speaker:And it's quite a remarkable tale,
Speaker:really, because ornamental cherries weren't much planted prior
Speaker:to the 20th century. The big Edwardian and
Speaker:Victorian tree. And when I say big,
Speaker:I mean mid sized, too small. I e the tree of the
Speaker:front garden, the tree of the proud suburban
Speaker:homeowner was lilac and vo Burnham,
Speaker:those very, very old fashioned things. And then from the Edwardian period onwards,
Speaker:we get this ramping, ramping, ramping up of the cherry
Speaker:tree until we reach the position we're in now, when whole streets
Speaker:can be snowed with blossom
Speaker:in particular weeks of the spring. You'll hear a little bit about that when I
Speaker:start reading now. The rise of blossom
Speaker:is the great untold story of the 20th century.
Speaker:We have breeders and enthusiasts to thank, men and women in
Speaker:Europe, America and Japan, the ornamental cherries homeland,
Speaker:who formed societies, published bulletins and hunted lost
Speaker:specimens in old gardens. When their experiments and rediscoveries
Speaker:reached nurserymen, the market was flooded with new cultivars.
Speaker:There were chrysanthemum, flowered, pinks, weeping forms,
Speaker:upright columns and patio friendly dwarfs. By 1948,
Speaker:the ornamental cherry was popular enough to earn a lashing from Vita Sackville
Speaker:West, who described the cultivar Kanzan as gordy
Speaker:and derided it as ubiquitous in the gardens of bungalows,
Speaker:villas and suburbia. I agree with Vita.
Speaker:Kanzan is gordy, but it is also a masterpiece.
Speaker:It is big, pink and double flowered and is only everywhere
Speaker:because it is fun. There is a majestic specimen growing from the hedge
Speaker:at number 53 Grove Park. It has been perfectly pruned
Speaker:over the years, gently shaped to the space with none of the brutal mid limb
Speaker:amputations that so often blight the cultivar. Canzan is
Speaker:perhaps the most hacked at tree in London. It grows neatly
Speaker:upwards when young and will flower at three years old while still in
Speaker:its showroom pot. Thus it inveigles its way
Speaker:into spaces that are too small for its spreading stout
Speaker:trunked old age and is everywhere crudely butchered.
Speaker:As a child, Christopher Lloyd adored its deep rose blossom
Speaker:and copper tinged young foliage. But in 1994, at the
Speaker:age of 73, he admitted he had outgrown it.
Speaker:This calling affections was not something he wished to impose on
Speaker:other gardeners. Rather, he hoped they would feel its
Speaker:thrill, as he once had, and ignore the killjoys who point out that
Speaker:Kanzan is considered vulgar in some circles.
Speaker:Those who seek to impose their standards on others are missionaries,
Speaker:he suggested, and missionaries are sometimes turned against
Speaker:and murdered for being busy bodies. There we go.
Speaker:Missionaries turned against and murdered for being busy bodies.
Speaker:I don't know if you'd write that in a newspaper column today.
Speaker:There's lots of missionaries at the moment in
Speaker:the gardening world. I don't
Speaker:think that I'm one of them. But I have been writing about lawns. It's no
Speaker:mo. May as well I've been writing about lawns for the RHS,
Speaker:given the brief too bright the
Speaker:history of lawns, which could be quite a dull affair. But I
Speaker:think I turned it into a pretty good
Speaker:article. There's some atomic
Speaker:chemical warfare, there's some Francis
Speaker:Bacon, Albertus Magnus, who is something
Speaker:of a household saint here Albertus Magnus, the medieval writer
Speaker:who wrote treaties on gardens, and he hangs as a sort of
Speaker:house genie, a portrait of him. Above the entrance
Speaker:to this house, above the door, there a little portrait
Speaker:we found in a secondhand bookshop in Carterhena, of all
Speaker:places. So it was nice to slip
Speaker:him between the pages of the RHS journal.
Speaker:Anyway, I didn't advise that all lawns should be
Speaker:spared the lawn mower forever, but trod my
Speaker:normal line of do what
Speaker:feels best, a sort of fence sitting
Speaker:coached in aesthetic terms. But there
Speaker:we go. I have to say that I've kind of been driven away
Speaker:from Twitter of late, by the way, that the
Speaker:gardening is a series of
Speaker:little campaigns now run by
Speaker:people wanting to find fault.
Speaker:And I think that that's not really the spirit of
Speaker:horticulture, because there is fault to be found in this world, all sorts of fault.
Speaker:We live in fields of fault, but most of them aren't in
Speaker:back gardens. Most of them are in car parks and car culture
Speaker:and the horrible concrete spread
Speaker:of modern life. And that is what we should rail against and rail
Speaker:together, rather than the setting three
Speaker:versus setting five versus setting the lawnmower
Speaker:on fire. Settings of the lawnmower.
Speaker:Carl, I suppose you need a job now. I need
Speaker:a garden. Well, I have one. Not like
Speaker:this, of course. My name is Mrs. John Bennett.
Speaker:I live at Via Tintillo. I'll talk it over with my husband.
Speaker:Why don't you come by tomorrow, about noon? Thank you.
Speaker:My gardening this week has been rather shameful,
Speaker:I'm afraid to admit. I've made a series of horrible
Speaker:blunders and committed some
Speaker:horticultural sins. Sins against the world
Speaker:of horticulture and sins against my own garden, I'm terribly sorry
Speaker:to say. Firstly, I went to
Speaker:the little local supermarket and
Speaker:bought a load of herbaceous perennials from that stack
Speaker:of Dutch trolleys that they just get dumped in their foyer to
Speaker:slowly dry out and die. And I know I should be supporting
Speaker:independent nurseries and I know that this is not
Speaker:the way to buy plants. I was buying
Speaker:Salvia nimrosa, the little
Speaker:woodland sage that grows best in full of sun.
Speaker:Is it a woodland sage, then? Well, it's in the name, the woodland sage
Speaker:nimrosa of the woodlands. And he
Speaker:found these plants remarkably, remarkably cheap,
Speaker:which is obviously the seduction, but they were
Speaker:at least labeled Nimarota, not just salvia, as sometimes you find, but they
Speaker:were labeled with their cultivar as mixed and
Speaker:a big picture of some purple and some white
Speaker:salvias in flour. Now, I only want the classic purple,
Speaker:so I had to do a rather shameful unstacking
Speaker:and repacking there in the supermarket.
Speaker:I was looking for the red tinge on
Speaker:the internodes, guessing that those with the darker internodes
Speaker:have more of the pigments that will be on the final flower spike. So I
Speaker:think I managed to get all purple salvias at
Speaker:a very low price, but I'm sure at a
Speaker:cost. It's not something unique to me.
Speaker:I've been reading a very good book this week, Husbandry,
Speaker:by Isabelle Bannerman, which I do recommend.
Speaker:If anyone is looking for a good horticultural book, I like it because it's
Speaker:very, very lightly written,
Speaker:by which I don't mean fluffy or glib
Speaker:or dumbed down. It feels like it has come from
Speaker:a brain rather than from a
Speaker:series of little sound bites. How can I make this clever?
Speaker:It's got a slightly repetitious feeling. You go over the
Speaker:same plants again and again, but that's how we experience
Speaker:our gardens. Our gardens aren't about well on this
Speaker:day. I looked at this plant, on this day, I looked at that plant.
Speaker:Our gardens are constant returns to the same plants
Speaker:that we like in this, like that we worry about. And that happens in the
Speaker:book. She goes back and back over the same plants and the same
Speaker:fundamental dislikes or passions,
Speaker:mainly passions, which I think is I think is a good sign in the book
Speaker:approach from different angles, which is how life works,
Speaker:is how we all think. Anyway, one of the things in the
Speaker:book is that their best lavender hedges
Speaker:in the new garden, which is the subject of
Speaker:the piece, are from BnQ. They drive around
Speaker:desperately try to find all of the
Speaker:lavender plants delivered to the BNCs across Somerset, which is
Speaker:something that I've done and is what I was doing in that shop in the
Speaker:same way. Very good as well. Very good advice
Speaker:in there, very good pictures for giving instant
Speaker:establishment to what is a very new garden by spending basically all
Speaker:the budget on vast whacking great lumps of topry
Speaker:of toppoury, rather and letting all the froth and frill and cheap
Speaker:little annuals do their work beside it. Which I think is very good
Speaker:for general approaches, particularly if we're going
Speaker:towards more wilderness gardens more wild
Speaker:and woolly and unknown gardens. You do need those beehives.
Speaker:You do need something to say. Time is here, it exists
Speaker:within this garden. But if someone as brilliant as
Speaker:her and her and her husband garden makers of much renown,
Speaker:are scouring the discount aisles, then I think,
Speaker:so can I. The shame in it isn't
Speaker:in my garden. It's not about the worry that people will
Speaker:come around and say, my goodness, I recognize that plant, that's a co op,
Speaker:three, six, five, salvia. It's that it damages
Speaker:the industry somewhat. And we shouldn't be encouraging people who
Speaker:are not putting proper cultivar names on their plants
Speaker:and who are growing them all in computer cold, controlled warehouses and
Speaker:bussing them out to us in this floppy, sappy state. But the trouble is that
Speaker:all happens so far from
Speaker:my shopping trip, so far from our gaze.
Speaker:It's a constant dilemma. I've been reading another book, actually,
Speaker:this week. I've read Rebecca Solnit's
Speaker:brilliant book, orwell's Roses.
Speaker:It's a wonderful biography, a bit like
Speaker:Ruth Skurz biography of Napoleon with the gardens
Speaker:as the gimmick. It's George Oil tied to the roses
Speaker:he planted in 1936 from a
Speaker:local woolworth shop. Essentially, she's making the
Speaker:argument that she takes from that fantastic
Speaker:phrase of the suffrage movement over in America.
Speaker:She's making the argument that they did which was all
Speaker:must have bread and roses too. Or is it
Speaker:bread for all and roses too? That's the more poetic way. Bread for
Speaker:all and roses too and all wells.
Speaker:Life and writing is often seen as the bread, as the meat, as the political
Speaker:fight, as the anti totalitarianism.
Speaker:But actually, she points out that in his writing and in
Speaker:his life, there is all of this roses stuff,
Speaker:there is the conservatism with the small sea which led
Speaker:to the love of the countryside and et cetera,
Speaker:et cetera. But anyway, it's great, great book focused in all
Speaker:of these things. But part of it, it takes place in Colombia
Speaker:on the Bogota savannah and all of those great big
Speaker:rose growing warehouses. And it's a very
Speaker:obvious example of when we
Speaker:buy cheap from supermarket forecourts.
Speaker:We encourage we
Speaker:encourage is unfair on us. But it's true.
Speaker:We contribute towards these incredibly precarious,
Speaker:degraded workers who have horrible conditions,
Speaker:miserable pay, thorny thumb spiked lives
Speaker:out there in those plastic polytunnels.
Speaker:And I don't think that these plants will have done damage in
Speaker:that sense, but they do come from a
Speaker:world of horticulture, a world of Dutch mass
Speaker:propagation that probably, if I thought about it consciously,
Speaker:I don't support. But, yeah, there they are. There they are,
Speaker:growing in my garden. We're not growing yet. Not quite growing yet,
Speaker:because I haven't planted them out yet. They are so lush
Speaker:and so obviously climate controlled that
Speaker:I'm doing the little in out dance. They're going to spend a
Speaker:night or two coming in a night or two?
Speaker:A day or two, rather, sitting out there in ever
Speaker:increasing bits of sunlight. I'm going to inch them
Speaker:out until they can take a little bit of full sun and then whack them
Speaker:into the borders. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Whack them into the
Speaker:borders.
Speaker:Isn't it fantastic, Rosa? He's only been here a few
Speaker:short weeks and already everything's changing. Things need to be growing everywhere.
Speaker:Yes, ma'am. He has the power. Well, I'd say he has a green thumb.
Speaker:Have you ever heard that expression, Rosa? Oh, yes,
Speaker:senora. But I don't mean that. It's just
Speaker:not natural, the way everything is growing so fast.
Speaker:Well, maybe he's a magician.
Speaker:My other great failure this week has been
Speaker:in the pricking out of a load of gypsophila elegance
Speaker:that I sewed far too thick. I sewed them after
Speaker:I'd had a few bad germinations that I
Speaker:talked about in the episode last week.
Speaker:And they all
Speaker:germinated, germinated crest, thick, thicker than cress.
Speaker:And they are so tightly woven together as terrified of disentangling
Speaker:them. So I tried to prick them out almost too early. The second
Speaker:pair of leaves, the first true leaves, weren't really emerged,
Speaker:they were just poking up, which meant that they were incredibly
Speaker:fragile. But already the roots were terribly,
Speaker:terribly entwined.
Speaker:Seeds, unfortunately, when they send
Speaker:up stalk above and root below, don't do it in
Speaker:a perfectly straight line, as if the seed were
Speaker:a slowly disappearing bead on
Speaker:a on a string pulled taut. What they do
Speaker:is send out the stem
Speaker:with a little hook in it and the root the same,
Speaker:so that they can twist and turn
Speaker:around each other and tangle terribly. So trying to tease apart
Speaker:these minute things led to all sorts
Speaker:of root ripping and damage and cursing.
Speaker:I eventually print them out into little individual trays
Speaker:and they look so terribly,
Speaker:terribly sad and small there,
Speaker:it's heartbreaking. They're like hedgehogs in a sanctuary,
Speaker:little tiny baby hedgehogs being kept alive by tubes.
Speaker:And you think, they shouldn't be here, they should be doing something
Speaker:more natural out there. If I'd known they
Speaker:were going to germinate so easily, I think I'd have just broadcast them
Speaker:over the beds, which is what I'll do for the rest of the
Speaker:packet. I've also been chopping up some saxophraga.
Speaker:Gus Herbium, London Pride. You are spared reading from the
Speaker:London Pride chapter of my book,
Speaker:no, I Wait,
Speaker:which is multiplying
Speaker:like bacteria under my hand.
Speaker:I'm chopping it in half every year because it takes well
Speaker:to being chopped in half with a very, very sharp spade.
Speaker:Last year there were two, there are now four sliced straight
Speaker:down the middle. And they're happy, they are growing away.
Speaker:They're at the stage where there is a little pink nub
Speaker:of proto buds at the center of each
Speaker:fresh rosette. Soon that will be thrust up
Speaker:and tinkling so light and fairy like above
Speaker:the plants. And I probably do the same again next year.
Speaker:And mathematicians among you can work out
Speaker:how many years until the world is entirely
Speaker:covered in my little divided saxophage
Speaker:plants. Propagation is a slow, weight garden,
Speaker:but a mighty rewarding one.
Speaker:I want to get to the stage with this garden where there is enough
Speaker:of it to give for giving. A little bit of
Speaker:plant, I think is the most stylish way to turn up
Speaker:to a house, a little bit of
Speaker:something delightful to put in. Their garden only works
Speaker:with people who have very large
Speaker:gardens that they can lose anything unwanted
Speaker:in. Otherwise it's a bit presumptuous. It's like with cut flowers.
Speaker:They are perfect because they are temporary.
Speaker:You can give them as a gift and whoever
Speaker:receives them knows they're going to die. So if they're not their color, they're a
Speaker:plant, they can't possibly abide. Well, it's only a week and then I can
Speaker:chuck them out. But give someone a phleanopsis that they hate,
Speaker:a house plant, they did a test, they have to keep it forever. That's why
Speaker:we don't give permanent gifts. You don't turn up at a house and say,
Speaker:oh, I got you a saucepan. Firstly, because they might not
Speaker:want your crummy saucepan, where are they going to store it? And secondly, because there's,
Speaker:I suppose, a little bit of an implication. I saw you couldn't afford a saucepan,
Speaker:so I bought you a saucepan, old bean. And if someone
Speaker:has a very, very tiny garden and you bring them a whacking great division
Speaker:of hemorrhacalus, then they've got
Speaker:it forever and it's taken up a quarter of their growing space.
Speaker:Though if they have acres, then you can give them as much hemorrhacalus
Speaker:as they want and they'll say, okay, great, I'll put
Speaker:that in a lovely bed I've just prepared behind
Speaker:the mower shed next to that nettle and
Speaker:everyone is happy. So I'm going to get to the stage where there
Speaker:are bits of London Pride flying around the world.
Speaker:Little bits of napita. I've been propagating
Speaker:some napita walkers low a garden center purchase
Speaker:bought at this time of year, when they are so flooded with
Speaker:orcsins and hormones they are teenage
Speaker:and bursting with potential for
Speaker:growth. So you can just whip off the stems, strip off the
Speaker:lower leaves, stick them in some good, well drained compost
Speaker:and let them go. I chopped these off two weeks ago,
Speaker:and exactly two weeks later,
Speaker:Sunday to Sunday, I was able to see roots
Speaker:emerging from the bottom of the two liter pot in which I put all
Speaker:the cuttings. I think I'll leave it another week for them to get down and
Speaker:then divide them and suddenly have eight new plants.
Speaker:So if you know me and invite me
Speaker:to anything good in the coming months,
Speaker:then pretend to be surprised.
Speaker:Pretend to be surprised at your gift.
Speaker:I think we better call a doctor. He was all right yesterday. I saw him
Speaker:working in the garden. Carl, what's wrong? No, it's Ralph.
Speaker:He's coughing blood. Oh, dear. Get Dr. Lombard.
Speaker:Propagation aside, I've been doing a little bit of cutting back,
Speaker:cut back some ivy to give
Speaker:a bit more light to a bed. I checked, obviously,
Speaker:for my nesting birds prior to that and realized
Speaker:this was the time to do it, because the berries have finally all gone,
Speaker:been consumed. The flowers are a long way off. Its nature
Speaker:value is at its lowest. So I went
Speaker:in there and got hacking and cracking.
Speaker:It's a pretty poor
Speaker:end result. It looks very ugly because it's just a load of
Speaker:bare ivy stems on a fence. Now, I want to get it to
Speaker:that shimmering green wool stage, but prior
Speaker:to that, it needs to go completely bare. Ivy on
Speaker:a fence or a wall is a tricky beast. It needs
Speaker:to be clipped an awful lot to keep it crisp and
Speaker:modern looking. And there's
Speaker:always a danger as well that you ruin
Speaker:the line. You ruin this wonderful
Speaker:decorative modernist block by
Speaker:having a great lumpy, bulging stem coming
Speaker:out of the bottom. And stems are
Speaker:lovely things, but if you're going for that aesthetic,
Speaker:then I think it's better to hide it somehow in a
Speaker:little hedge, little evergreen hedge, a little bit of box,
Speaker:a fine ivy wool behind it,
Speaker:and you're good to go.
Speaker:I'd like to recommend the garden as a tour for the hospital plan.
Speaker:Oh, didn't I tell you, Gladys? Actually, ralph didn't do this.
Speaker:Ellen has a new gardener.
Speaker:Carl's hedge
Speaker:of box reminds me, I've been delving
Speaker:back into one of my favorite subjects this week, which is archaeobotany.
Speaker:It's the archaeologists take on what people
Speaker:grew and gardened with. And I love it because I
Speaker:do love archaeologists and their ways of thinking, talking and writing.
Speaker:And I obviously love botany and gardens.
Speaker:And they're talking about box in Roman Britain
Speaker:and how it might have been used. And it's all
Speaker:we believe that it was planted
Speaker:in dense plantings with
Speaker:a strictly delineational aspect,
Speaker:a dividing line,
Speaker:a separation of the limited public space of
Speaker:the street from the private, the sanctuary within. And of course,
Speaker:what they mean to say is hedges, romans use it as hedges,
Speaker:but they have all this wonderful archaeological language
Speaker:surrounding it. I mean, it's a bit of a joke, isn't it? It's a bit
Speaker:of a joke that everything had a sacred purpose.
Speaker:Roman gardens are always discussed as places of health
Speaker:and cleanliness and almost of purging
Speaker:rather than places, do you think? Well, what if they like things that looked
Speaker:nice? Although undoubtedly, I suppose health does play a
Speaker:big part in the writings about it. There's a great
Speaker:letter from Plierney the Younger. I can't remember which of
Speaker:the letters it is. I think it's one of the there's two very, very famous
Speaker:villa letters where he describes his villa, which are probably some of
Speaker:the foundational texts in garden history.
Speaker:And he's talking about how the countryside
Speaker:and gardens particularly, are so good
Speaker:for health. And the evidence of this is that when I move my slaves to
Speaker:work for me out here in the countryside, none of them seem to die.
Speaker:A sentence that tells a horrible truth about their
Speaker:life back in the capital city
Speaker:and their status more generally. But anyway, yes, go and read
Speaker:your plenty's letters, foundational stuff, and also go and
Speaker:read your Husbandry by Isabel Bannerman and
Speaker:go and read your Orwell's Roses by Rebecca
Speaker:Solnit. I realized that, stumbling upon it as I did, I probably didn't do
Speaker:it justice. She is the most brilliant writer.
Speaker:She is so engaged and thoughtful
Speaker:without being lecturing.
Speaker:And she also has the confidence
Speaker:to repeat herself, which I think is sometimes a sign of a
Speaker:very good writer. What I was talking
Speaker:about in the Isabel Bannerman book but here is more explicit,
Speaker:more obvious. She starts each section of the book with a
Speaker:variant on the line. In 1936, george Orwell
Speaker:planted roses. In 1936, a young writer planted roses.
Speaker:In 1936, a man in in wallington planted roses,
Speaker:et cetera, et cetera, which is a really fun and
Speaker:quite subtle way of showing yes, this is one of those collections
Speaker:of discursive thoughts from one starting point. But I'm
Speaker:not going to hide that. I'm going to make it clear, I'm going to make
Speaker:it absolutely explicit. As someone who has written
Speaker:a similar book of discursions from the same point,
Speaker:but with probably less well, certainly considerably
Speaker:less aplomb, I appreciate seeing that
Speaker:kind of thing. Yes, again, going to pick up a copy of that
Speaker:and otherwise have a wonderful week
Speaker:gardening and reading and whatever else you're doing. Try to
Speaker:remember, bread for all and roses,
Speaker:too. I hope the bread part of your week is not too
Speaker:onerous and there's plenty of time for the rosy
Speaker:bits. I am off now to look at someone plant
Speaker:a tree in honor of the
Speaker:king, so let's hope they do it right.
Speaker:Please do go and support the
Speaker:podcast. If you enjoyed this, either by leaving a
Speaker:rating and review on wherever you listen to this,
Speaker:they're really easy to do, takes a second. Be really effusive.
Speaker:Remember that. It really has changed your life.
Speaker:You spent 30 minutes listening to it. That's a change. You could have done
Speaker:something else with that, too. So life changing, I think, does apply.
Speaker:And also go and support it, if you can,
Speaker:by going to Cofi.com
Speaker:Bendark and buying me a coffee. I will
Speaker:put a link to that underneath this podcast as
Speaker:well. Thank you very much and goodbye.
Speaker:Can we get you a drink? Oh, no, thanks. I'll just be a minute.
Speaker:I wanted to ask you, have you ever hired a gardener named Carl?
