h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I was a little kid, I loved my grandmother's second-floor apartment with its view of the front lawn and trees across the street. She had a rack of African violets, which she kept next to the radiator in winter.

Last night I dreamed I was there again, but this time she was long gone (she died in 1978). The walls were covered with bookcases, but some of the shelves had potted flowers on them. These flowers were all yellow, in slightly different shades, as if whoever lived there now didn't want to be bothered getting the colours exactly right, so just concentrated on the one colour.

For some reason, I was in the apartment every Sunday afternoon, because it had been made into a small branch library, and I was the reference librarian.

[Even in retirement, I still have to work when I go to sleep ]

oh, did you retire already? i thought it wasn't until later this year

in any case it will probably take some time getting used to not going to (or dreaming of) w*rk after all these years

Hi Paulh,

I hope my grtandchildren have as nice dreams as that about my verandah garden.!! I shall post a photo of my bidens - you say that are not coreopsis!!- as soon as I have the time to do it. Very busy for the next few days with visits to Keith and also my granddaughter, the mechanicaol engineer who works for a firm in Holland who design wind farms, is coming to visit her old Gran. !

go well

Christiane,
Ar80
sunday 25th July 2919 19.00 BST

Paul, yellow is a wonderful colour.

In flowers it means hope, happiness and remembrance.

The flowers I take to my Mum's grave are usually yellow, because she was my best friend.

I think you are remembering your grandmother with a lot of love and affection


lil xx

I will never forget my grandmother. That's nice about the meaning of yellow. It usually perks me up with I'm feeling low. The bees here like it a lot, too.

It's funny but I sometimes dream I'm back at work again.
The odd thing is that I'm never doing anything, just walking round.
Perhaps the brain just likes the routine that went with working.

the other night i dreamt i was at w*rk trying to sort a lot of papers, all written in bad hand writing, almost impossible to decifer - plus there were a lot of informations missing - and people kept disturbing me all the time with irrelevant questions - and i was in a hurry to meet a deadline and - the i woke up and had to go to w*rk and... oh well, you can probably guess the rest

I often used to dream I was back at w*rk too. Just so glad to wake up and find that it was only a dream!

Sometimes I would dream that I was at work, and the place was totally full of people. In real life, there were never that many people there.

The thing I remember most about my grandmother's garden is her ferns. She was very solicitous about them, if a shoot came out of the drain holes at the base of the flowerpot, setting it on a substrate of potting soil so it could root (which took an entire season) then separating it and re-potting it.

Ferns are quite beautiful. Some people have the patience to do gardening and get it right, which can take a lot of time and effort.

Funny that you should mention ferns Paul. I have quite a lot of them - some quite extraordinary. I think they were practically the first form of plant life.

I am trying to build up a collection on my verandah between the geraniums and the pelargoniums. They do look very effective. I keep meaning to ask my carer to take a photo and then I forget.

Go well,
Christiane
AR80

Thursday 20th July 2010 16.05 BST

Does bracken count as ferns? I suppose not but the smell of bracken
in early summer always transports me back to my childhhod.
A truly versatile plant for children to play in. It can be a jungle
to explore or a den to hide in.

Hi Mistadong,

I really do not know. I have always thought that bracken was a sort of "Wild" fern. Nice that it brings back such super memories.

It was too dry and hot in the part of south africa where I lived and was brought up for bracken to grow.

i lived in the karroo. !!

Go well,

Christiane
Ar80

Thursday 29th July, 2010 16 25 BST

The ferns in my father's forest used to give off a very sweet smell. I don't understand why anyone would not feel enchanted about the wonderful plants that grow in forests. Instead, we keep seeing forests cleared for one reason or another.

Algae were the first plants. They lived in the oceans as long ago as 1.2 million years, and probably formed scum on the land a few hundred million years later. The first land plants were apparently related to the liverworts, which may be mosses. After the mosses came the ferns...

Ferns are vast in species type in comparison to Bracken a close relative with surprising few varieties, they both remind me of hot summer days on Ilkley moor, enjoying a good picnic and avoiding the native sheep.

Bracken is a family in the fern order, like cats are a family in the carnivore order, so talking about brackens vs. ferns is like talking about cats vs. carnivores

i was born in my grandmother's house which is very close to the 1000 year old cathedral so it's fair to believe that while houses have been torn down and rebuilt frequently over the years the shape and size of her garden has been more or less like it is now for many hundreds of years.

it has been many years since i last saw it, but i remember it as being quite small, yet big enough for a small stable with two pigs (yes, in the middle of the town, very common back then) a shed for a few chicken, some rows of cabbage and the like, a few bushes with berries, a pear tree and a plum tree

i remember her telling me that she once had to run out in the street only dressed in a slip because some naughty boys had let the pigs out. this was during WW2 and if the pigs were not caught again it would have been disastrous for the family's economy. while this part of germany escaped almost unscathed from bombings and other incidents of war the land was poorer than poor

i had to promise her to never let her pigs out - and i can proudly say that i never did

now back to you, paulh

I'm not going to be able to go whole hog after a story like that, Pierce.