NAKED BOYS AND THE GOJI CARROT ORGY

This lonely little colchicum popped up today.

A lady wrote to me, the other day, to ask how she should prune her wonderberry. I giggled at first, thinking that only men had those. I suppose I was dredging up recollections of Chuck Berry, until I remembered that his thing was a dingaling and he was the Berry, if you see what I mean.

A-a-a-anyway, this lady had grown a crop of the aforementioned wonderberries (more info in this interesting thread) because, apparently, they are a superfood. Further investigation revealed that they were also a particularly unpleasant fruit, closely related to deadly nightshade. I had grown myself, a century or so ago. That was in the days of Saint Percy Bysshe Thrower and the Blessed Fred Streeter - but at that time these nasty black orbs of bitter-sweet nothingness were called Huckleberries. I have to say, mine was anything but a Finn crop, indeed it was a bumper harvest!!! - Geddit??? - but after harvesting about a teacupful, I tasted one, then another and then binned the lot and dug the plants in as green manure.

Prunus sargentii - the best cherry for autumn colour.

Nothing whatever to do with today's text, but so pretty I had to show you.

Now, apparently, snappy marketeers have named these things 'Wonderberries.' Huzzah! All I can say, though, is that it's a wonder that anyone bothers to grow the horrible things.

An ancient friend of mine, one John Codrington – who, incidentally, was sowing seeds of Douglas fir in his 91st year – also tasted some of my huckleberries and his verdict concurred with mine. He also noticed black nightshade, in full berry, in my disgracefully weedy veg garden and before I could stop him, snatched a few plump fruits and munched them. 'Aren't they poisonous?' I asked, shocked at his rashness. 'Almost certainly,' he agreed, 'but they taste better than those huckleberry things of yours.' He survived another three years.I suppose that when you're in your 90s, you don't mind being a bit reckless.

Speaking of which, I had a delightful Esther Rantzen moment when pulling my carrot - whoops, pardon missis! - as I was saying, when pulling up my carrots for today's lunch. A whole cluster came together - oooh, not again, missis, perlease!!! - from part of the row where, earlier, my hand had slipped while sowing the seeds and where I couldn't be arsed, subsequently, to thin the seedlings. There had been more than a little promiscuity in the overcrowded row and I ended up with what looked like a rather naughty orgy. I show them here exactly as lifted.

Not sure what these carrots are doing, but it looks jolly rude!

The dear Wonderberry lady, as an afterthought, asked me for advice on pruning Goji berries. Now that really did make me laugh. If Wonderberries - do they still make Wonderbras, I wonder? . . . but I'm digressing horribly, and revealing the mental age as hovering between 11 and 13. Stop it at once!

This lady, like hundreds, nay, thousands, of happy gardeners are growing what I've always known as the Duke of Argyll's Tea Trea Lycium barbarum and eating its nasty, tart little berries. Why? Because, my dear Watson, it is a Superfood like some of these.

Eat goji nasties and the years will simply fall away, leaving your skin alabaster clear and your heart going pit-a-pat with all that new-found health and vigour. Stuff your face with goji berries - an ancient Chinese medical miracle - and your body will scoot all those nasty age-causing free radicals and you will extend your life dramatically.

Or will you? If goji berries are so bloody marvellous at making you live longer, how come the Ancient Chinese who discovered the things are all dead?

I went blackberrying yesterday. Not a leisurely ramble, basket in hand while the sun beamed down and the late swallows zoomed over the stubbles, but a frantic dash on my bike, to grab enough fruit for the Photographer General to put a crumble on top of - if you'll pardon the clumsy sentence construction - for our Sunday lunch.

They were absolutely, utterly yummily delicious - or 'yummalicious' as the PG's brother will say - and what amazed me was that no one, not a soul, not a sausage not a single person - villager or foreigner - was there, in the lane where the hedges are hung with a heavy, ripe, lusciously glistening and twinkling blackberry crop. Such a waste! And then it dawned on me that they are all at home, tending to their goji berry bushes. Blackberries, you see, aren't superfoods like brocolli and goji berries. Or if they are, their 'superness' is done-for when they become fattening blackberry and apple crumble with clotted cream. MMMMmmmm! That won't extend your life one iota. Also, the seeds might give you diverticulitis - now that's painful.

Hydrangea 'Preziosa' - a faded tart of flushed beauty.

On another tack, I'm bitterly, bitterly betrayed, saddened and disappointed. Every year, since moving here, I've tried my damnedest to make colchicums bulk up and make an autumn show. Each year, I put several bulbs, always in different bits of the garden, always with a sense of optimism and joy. And what happens? They flower in Year One, and then decline and eventually die. I'm mortified, because I do love them. Those pallid, delicate flowers rising from the stale grasses so freshly and in such delicate lavender tones!

The Victorians called them Naked Ladies or sometimes, Naked Boys, and you can see why, when those delicate flesh tones make such a startling contrast with the tired autumn foliage that surrounds them. My mother despises colchicums for their own rank foliage which follows in spring. Beth Chatto, on the other hand, uses them specifically as foliage plants in her dry garden. Go figure!

Hydrangea 'Preziosa' again. Still pretty when dead.

I'm listening to Schubert's song cycle Der Winterreise, a remastered recording of Peter Pears accompanied by Benjamin Britten.

This time in 1984 I was loading plants into our Transit van to exhibit at the RHS Great Autumn Show.

This week's film was High Noon - Fred Zinneman's timeless (ha ha) classic with Gary Cooper old enough to be his bride, Grace Kelly's grandpa. I believe, along with Shane and The Big Country this is one of the greatest Westerns ever. Eastwood's Unforgiven is pretty fantastic, too. Miss Kelly looked lovely but was acted off the screen by the smoulderingly wonderful Mexican, Katy Jurado.

Byeeeee!