Begonia Get It Wrong

I just popped around to my elderly neighbour’s house, as her power bill had been delivered to my mailbox. After a lengthy chat about the rising price of gift wrap and how they (the powers that be, one assumes) have gone and changed the texture of curling ribbon, I was sent forth on a mission to pick up some supplies from the garden centre. 

 

While I’m happy to do this, I’m a bit apprehensive about it. Bessie can be quite fiery when she wants to be, and I wouldn’t know a bay tree from a bale of hay if it tap danced across the garden fence. I guess I’m concerned that I’ll mess up her order, and then she’ll….what? Tell me off, perhaps while brandishing her walking stick at me? 

 

Or maybe it’s that I don’t want her to know that I don’t know squat about plants. You see, Bessie has somehow formed the idea that I have a green thumb, and my ego wants her to retain that notion. I suppose she thinks that because I have a beautiful garden, but in actual fact I rely on a professional gardener for things like plant selection, design and planting, as well as maintenance. I’ll occasionally crack out some secateurs and have a bit of a snip, but I don’t really have any idea what I’m doing. 

 

Anyway, Bessie must have seen me at it a few times, and failed to notice the regular comings and goings of gardeners to my property. Now she thinks I’m an expert horticulturist, and has entrusted me with picking up some rare begonia tubers. She said she wants me to do it because I know my stuff (according to her), and last year her daughter got her the worst batch she’d ever seen. 

 

Of course, I could have just told her that I don’t know begonias, or plants for that matter. But alas, I went along with it, and now I’m knee-deep in deceit.