A Little Love And Tenderness

How do you turn the photo in the top left into the one in the bottom right, simple with a little love and tenderness, plus hours of hard graft in the hot sunshine. My girlfriend Wonderful Wi with minimal help from myself, and a little bit more from the one who even in a good mood is best avoided, Mama, managed to manicure the assorted pile of soil into our lovely garden. Amazing Thailand, Amazing Wilai.

Wilai or Wi from here on just adores knocking (garden terminology) around in our garden. I am now planning to take up the Buddhist faith and in my next life I want to come back as a Rosa Alba or to you who are not taxonomist’s, a White Rose. I will get watered everyday, pruned once in a while, looked at lovingly, and have my picture taken every now and then. The best bit is, if a dog pisses all over me I can watch it run off yelping, with stones bouncing off it’s ass.

Some days I will get small groups of giggling schoolgirls surround me and make foreign sounding noises. Roughly translated they mean ” Aaaah, isn’t he lovely, when I’m older I want loses (cannot pronounce R’s at that age) in my garden,” and the clever one of the group says ” Actually the white lose represents the English county of Yorkshire and in 1453…….” Them village youngsters are getting to smart nowadays.

Wi spends hours and hours in the garden, I have even known her to work in the semi darkness with just a flashlight as aid and me sat at our garden table drinking and chain smoking just to give her extra light from my fai chek (lighter) . When we visit Udon Thani we often return laden with flowers, plants and small trees, that’s when the trouble starts.

Wi knows she has to get up early and out in the garden before Mama returns from annoying people at the Wat. Otherwise Mama will start putting everything where she thinks best and Wi has to take everything up and plant them where they were meant to go. In the plants early days if we travel to Udon and stay for the night, when we return more often than not Mama has uprooted some of the plants and put them back to where she first thought best. Then the whole process starts all over again. A botanical chess game.

In the year 2000 I stayed in a village in Chachoengsao with a young lady for about one month. Her family house was brick built, fairly comfortable and had a small unfenced garden at the front. The garden was full of everything you would find in a dustbin, but they didn’t have one. I bought them a fair sized plastic dustbin. During the first night the soi dogs got at the bin and in the morning the garden was back to its normal state. From then on every night I placed the bin just inside the front door, had a quick look at the rubbish free garden and went to bed. After about five days I got up one morning and noticed the bin was near full and starting to hum. I mentioned it to my young lady and she summoned her younger sister over. The pair of them then proceeded to carry it over to the open window, picked it up and emptied it out the window and into the garden. I think it was then that I realized why they inserted Amazing before Thailand.

Talking about amazing, lets get back to Wi. Back in September we visited Hua Hin and I introduced Wi to the internet for her first time. She spent lots of mornings in our hotel lobby looking at net sites full of flowers, plants, trees and garden ideas. That’s what I like about Wi, she’s just a big pile of flowers, handbags and shoes, a real girl next door. Christmas I’m looking forward to continuing my garden hobby which is drinking and chain smoking at the garden table, admiring the view. I will probably drift off and dream about my next life as a Rosa Alba. Mind you having just rushed back from the bathroom and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, the Queen of the Desert or as it’s better known the Ugly Leaf flower is probably nearer the mark. I wonder what that smart ass schoolgirl will have to say about that…….Hoo Don