Saturday, October 21, 2006

Oh, dear. I have had harsh words with Ibrahim the gardener, normally my ally and source of horticultural wisdom, since I know absolutely nothing about gardening. What I do know however, is that I don't want my pawpaws and banana trees planted in rows, but I want to make a little forest with the trees tout en dèsordre. Ibrahim doesn't think much of this romantic aesthetic. Nevertheless I decided to pull rank and marked out exactly where I wanted the trees. The next day when I arrived Ibrahim had completely ignored my instructions and planted the pawpaws in a neat row!
I fumed quietly for some time, whilst trying to hold on to my architect Boucoum's advice: calme-toi Sophie, c'est l'Afrique. Then I decided not to have him dig up what he had planted but instead to get some more pawpaws and simply have him plant those too but exactly where I want them, in my presence, in between his rows, thus ruining his scheme. Am I being a dreadful and cruel memsahibPosted by Picasa

1 Comments:

Blogger Daggamoh said...

Sophie: "tout en désordre", don't you think that this country counts with enough disorder to ask this? Thus, Malian know only the French garden, with nice and regular rows of plants and trees, in a Louis XIV style... and you wan't them to understand the romantic "négligé calculé" of british gardens (which, by the way, are the more beautifull garden I have ever seen).
Good luck to you!
Moses, the man who likes small things.

11:58 AM  

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