My melons are just fine, thanks

Just home from work today, CG asked me how my melons were.  For a moment I thought he was making a pass at me, but no, he meant the watermelon plants that are gradually taking over the greenhouse.  Oh well.  I was able to say that they were blooming, thank you very much.  We went into said greenhouse to take a look.  CG disappeared from view as he was still wearing his camouflage, but I could smell where he was as he'd had onions for lunch.

So you're au fait with the state of my melons.  What else can I tell you - it's Friday, probably where you are, too, and the roads are crawling with the three evil Ts - tourists, tractors and trucks, a deadly combination that makes any journey twice as long as it should be. I have completed another week at my state-funded training course, where I learned absolutely nothing except how to look busy when I'm not.  I was pretty good at this already to be honest, but as it is an essential lifeskill I am not averse to perfecting it.  The course participants are disappearing daily as more and more of them find employment or call in sick.  Those who are left hang around eating cake and playing with MS Office.

I'd like to describe my garden in greater detail but find myself unable to without boring people to tears.  One of my favourite books is 'Elizabeth and her German Garden' by Elizabeth von Arnim - I urge you to read it.  There's more to it than gardening - it's a sort of late 19th century blog and packed with cutting edge humour.  Anyway, the writer manages to convey her passion for flowers and shrubs without being dull.  I didn't have to skip a single page. How did she manage it?  Even a paragraph of my horticultural musings sends me to sleep, let alone anyone else who might read it.  I can sum up the current state of affairs for you though.  The melons, as you already know, are coming along nicely.  There are also some flowers, loads of slugs and millions of weeds.  But my pride and joy is my pumpkin patch.  By September I'll have at least thirty juicy orange-fleshed Hokkaido fruits.  We're going to have to invest in another freezer.

Back to Elizabeth and her garden.  She also uses pseudonyms for her family, and I just love the name she chose for her husband - the Man of Wrath.  As soon as I read it, I regretted using the rather floppy and pathetic CG for mine.  You know what I really wanted to call him?  My (shortly to be no more) secret nickname, the Voice of Doom.  This suits him far better, though he is cuddly too, most of the time.  VOD can cut through the most jolly of situations with his booming tones and, with his prophecies of doom and gloom, makes a wet blanket look bone-dry.  It isn't all bad though.  We need someone like him to remind us that life is not a bowl of cherries.  Or melons.