Gardening for Beginners

WHAT ever is the opposite of greenfingers, I have. I only have to walk past a houseplant for it to shrivel up and die in front of my eyes.
It's not a family thing. My brothers and sisters are all keen and expert gardeners. But I can get a cutting, water it with tears, dip it in rooting powder, keep it in a polythene bag in the airing cupboard, pray over it, cast magic spells, and wait for it to start shooting. And wait. And wait. And wait.
My mother on the other hand can find a dry twig in the road, stick it in her garden and the next day, honestly, it will be six foot high and covered in flowers.
As my birthday comes round and various people ask me if there is anything that I want, I sometimes ask for a plant of some kind. They look at me as if they may as well stick the tenner straight into the recycling bin and so cut out the middle man.
My eldest sister dishes out plants that she has propagated. They come complete with Latin name tag and strict instructions on how to care for them. Middle sister later gets the third degree. "Where's that Rosodendrum Daffodilus I gave you? I hope you put the the Violetus Primulatum in a nice shady spot. Did you remember to feed the Lilacum Carnatius with eye of toad and ear of bat? You'll have to move that Fuchsian Ragwort or it'll get club foot and yellow fever."
She comes round to my house to check up on the 150 plants she gave me at her last visit and it's: "Oh my god, the Zinnia Zebratum is still alive! IT'S STILL ALIVE! IT'S STILL ALIVE!"
I must admit, though, I do tend towards the neglectful side when it comes to gardening. If I pay out good money for a plant I expect it to be self-sufficient, sleeping in its own bed, finding its own food and not coming to me for handouts like some 25-year-old son unable to cut the apron strings.
My mother once prodded the dried up remains of various pot plants in my house, gave me that look that mothers have perfected over years of dealing with recalcitrant children and said witheringly, "You'll find a little water is a wonderful thing."
It doesn't help that gardening seems to be conducted in some arcane language that I have never managed to master.
Friends and family ask me things like, "Did you remember to prep the soil?" I might have. I might not have. What's it to you?

"Do you double dig?" Look, I have trouble getting my ass in gear to single dig.

"Some cultivars would look good over there." No doubt. So would some Bolivars, Magyars and Tartars, as long as they knew about gardening.
But I have a week's holiday coming up so I've been getting out the gardening books, this time determined to rival the creations at the Chelsea Flower Show. I will love my plants, talk to them, feed them on champagne and caviar and tuck them into their beds at night in the hope that they will repay me by sticking around for a few years.

It's time to turn over a new leaf.

Broadband Problems

IT seems ironic that after my last posting, called "procrastination" , I then take two weeks to write again. I have mitigating circumstances. My ISP phoned to say I could have a free broadband upgrade. Great. An email arrived inviting me to "click here" to activate. I "click here" to activate. 

Then the next time I try to connect to the internet. Nothing. I can, if I so desire, phone a helpline but as I notice it costs 50p a minute - 50-BLOODY-PEE A BLOODY MINUTE - for something I'm 99 per cent sure is their fault, I decide against the option, which in hindsight was probably a bad idea, it subsequently costing me a complete head of torn-out hair, sky-high blood pressure, teeth gnashed to the gums and acute apoplexy. 

I dig out the trailing wires that connect my computer to the phone line - these wires being the reason I went wireless in the first place - and try to connect again. I can't. I revert to an old paid-for account with an 0845 number. These costs are so high that I get a call from BT the next day to ask whether I knew someone had been dialling premium numbers from my phone.

 I expect I've been put on some BT "sad old gits" list, the one that lists all those men in stained polo shirts who think they have been phoning scantily clad young women to talk suggestively to them. In reality, "Tiffany" (42-24-36) in red basque and suspenders is "Mavis" (48-36-52) in sensible cardie and slippers trying to make a few bob. Anyway, success, my 0845 number allows me to connect to the internet. So nothing wrong with my phone or my computer, then, but something wrong with the broadband connection. I explain all this in a detailed email to my ISP. They take a day to reply.I write again. They take a day to reply. 

This goes on over several days with me getting increasingly irate. Eventually, they mention my password which I notice is one number different from my previous one - good of them to mention it before….. (that sound is my teeth rubbing together and steam coming out of my ears). Then it's into the router settings to change the password. Nothing. I'm not a computer geek - I don't play Dungeons and Dragons at Level 42 in my spare time or have riveting conversations in chat rooms about pings and servers and flobjobgibbets. I have no idea what the settings are supposed to be. 

To cut a long story short (I can hear the sighs of relief from those of you who have read this far), I get a list of all the settings from my ISP, type them in (the DNS address had reverted to 0.0.0.0.0 for some reason) and last night that red "no connection" sign that has been taunting me for days turns to a beautiful, wonderful, glorious, splendiferous shade of green with the word "connected". 

I'M BACK. Did you miss me? Did you send out a search party? Were you worried? Was your week strangely bereft without a "letter" from me? No? That's odd because without immediate access to the internet I have felt like Laurel without Hardy, Richard without Judy, Napoleon without Josephine, Gordon without Tony ……. I'm going to put on my wig, put in my false teeth, lie down and let my blood pressure return to normal now. I will reply to all your comments on my last posting later today.