Etiolated, October

Etiolated

This is my gardening word.

It is the reproach my garden makes to me. The syllables run round my head like the tendrils of the neglected, chlorophyll-starved, light-deprived plants. Long, useless stems develop, unable to feed themselves. They are the pale and sickly children in the Kaethe Kollwitz drawings of families in poverty, clinging to the skirts of anguished mothers. I have not cleared the weeds. I have again not cleared the weeds. I have failed my wispy consumptive plants. These ones will not survive my inaction. Etiolated jumps out at me and will not leave my brain, even though I have now walked well past them and have moved into the sunlit section of the garden where no-one needs me. They are not asking here for hand-outs. These shrubs and nettle-banks flourish and jostle each other in rude health and in the knowledge their families are landed gentry - centuries of inherited decayed vegetation have composted down without my help into prime nutrition. No need to emigrate in search of sustenance. Basking in occasional sun is their right and due. They know nothing of the industrial proletariat of thin shadow-bred scrawn that clusters round my badly-sited patio, holding out begging hands. Day by day I brush them off and ignore their needs. But their cries become etiolated, a word first heard on Gardeners' Question Time and that weaves itself into my conscience and will not let me be. Like hearing the opening notes of Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree by mistake as you pass a radio. Your day is ruined by a tune.

Or by a word.