I’ve got ladybirds for my plants, I don’t know what to get for my daughter
Last night my mum came round to help me release the ladybirds. We’d been messaging abstractly for some time about our parallel plant issues – I’d noticed small clusters of what looked like cottonwool or bath foam, collecting at the base of the leaves on my favourite plant. This is not just any plant, I should explain, this is a plant that’s more of a fairytale, more of a fable. Its leaves are large and sprawling and, after teasing for some time with finger-length pink buds, it will flower at dusk, each bud opening like a huge water-lily and emitting a deep, sweet smell like expensive vanilla. By morning the flowers are dead, rubbery and obscene, dangling limply from the stalk. The problem, my mum told me, was mealybugs, attacking my plant – and there was only one real way to get rid of them.
The mealybugs arrived at a moment in my life when I was trying to push back time. I’d never wanted to before. Don’t roll your eyes friends, yes I wear old-fashioned clothes, but swishing around in a 70s dress doesn’t mean I also want to return to lechery and power cuts. No, my focus today is on gently pressing technology away, just for a little while. You see, my daughter has just started in Year 6, the final year of primary school, and last week came home vibrating with a particular kind of agony at the realisation that “everybody else” had a mobile phone. I was not prepared for this conversation – I’d assumed this was a bridge we would cross (drag ourselves across, bleeding, “Save yourself!”) when she moved to secondary school, but I gave it a good go, I think.
Continue reading… I’ve got ladybirds for my plants, I don’t know what to get for my daughterLast night my mum came round to help me release the ladybirds. We’d been messaging abstractly for some time about our parallel plant issues – I’d noticed small clusters of what looked like cottonwool or bath foam, collecting at the base of the leaves on my favourite plant. This is not just any plant, I should explain, this is a plant that’s more of a fairytale, more of a fable. Its leaves are large and sprawling and, after teasing for some time with finger-length pink buds, it will flower at dusk, each bud opening like a huge water-lily and emitting a deep, sweet smell like expensive vanilla. By morning the flowers are dead, rubbery and obscene, dangling limply from the stalk. The problem, my mum told me, was mealybugs, attacking my plant – and there was only one real way to get rid of them.The mealybugs arrived at a moment in my life when I was trying to push back time. I’d never wanted to before. Don’t roll your eyes friends, yes I wear old-fashioned clothes, but swishing around in a 70s dress doesn’t mean I also want to return to lechery and power cuts. No, my focus today is on gently pressing technology away, just for a little while. You see, my daughter has just started in Year 6, the final year of primary school, and last week came home vibrating with a particular kind of agony at the realisation that “everybody else” had a mobile phone. I was not prepared for this conversation – I’d assumed this was a bridge we would cross (drag ourselves across, bleeding, “Save yourself!”) when she moved to secondary school, but I gave it a good go, I think. Continue reading… Parents and parenting, Mobile phones, Life and style, Children, Plants, Pesticides, Society, Technology
