Looking for explanations...

Weird things have been going on in the garden again – and this time I don’t think the husband is responsible. I’m fairly confident that he was asleep when these things happened, so on this occasion I’m looking for another culprit.

Mind you – I am not sure I have forgiven him for what he DID do at the weekend, which robbed the garden of some much needed colour, (other than the many shades of green of course, the garden is a sea of greenery). He pruned MY rose. My climbing Masquerade. My all time favourite rose. The flowers change colour as they develop, meaning you have some youthful yellow buds at the same time as some vivid red and fading pink petals. It is beautiful. Well – it WAS. Now it’s a spiky green stick.

He had a new pruning device for his birthday. (Yes – I DO know what they are called, but I can’t spell it – spell-check is unhelpfully suggesting ‘escapers’, ‘securers’ and ‘sweaters,’ and I can assure you I am not spelling it THAT badly. Perhaps it’s a French word.) Owning a garden tool that works and isn’t rusty (yet) sent him into a pruning frenzy. He removed all the flowers and buds, thus saving himself valuable minutes picking up dropped petals later on in the year. This was a rose that often bloomed until late November.

He has also been in plant-moving mode. We have a lovely deep pink peony that he relocates every year. His reason is because “it must be in the wrong spot”. (It IS – it’s in our garden.) He is disappointed that it only ever produces one flower… I think, this time, he’s actually moved it back to its original spot, which is pretty amazing – he usually kills them off long before they make it all the way round. There’s no point complaining – he always “justifies” the latest move, and carries on regardless. Plus, if he didn’t do it, nothing in his life would ever change.

But anyway, last night – about 7.45 pm I put some frozen food away in the freezer which lives in one of the few spots in the garage where the roof doesn’t leak. There was nothing strange then. After Eastenders I went to get an ice-lolly. Still nothing weird to report. I went out much later on to give Bosie and the Guinea pigs their night time handful of hay, and to be honest, it was too dark and damp and slug-y and snail-y to hang around. This morning though, when I took their morning carrots out, there was a toothbrush on the patio. It’s pretty old and worn and looks disgusting – but how did it get there? It can’t have blown into the garden like a crisp packet. It’s not one that I recognise. So far, the only logical solutions I can come up with are: (a) the next door neighbour has chucked it out of her bathroom window in an effort to pay me back for the time I lobbed a snail over the fence which (if the short high-pitched squeal was anything to go by) MAY have accidentally hit her; (b) a passing burglar dropped it while making his escape through our garden – my mum acquired a large axe like that, just before she moved house; or (c) it fell out of the sky. I’ve ruled out the possibility of it being a gift from whoever – or whatever – left box of cat-food under my car a few months ago.

A quick look round the garden revealed other tell-tale signs of strange goings-on. Just next to the recycling-box I discovered a large frog, which although still alive, had one back leg outstretched and sticking out at a bizarre angle – yet there are no signs of a fight. No cat-fang marks at all. And yesterday, while I was alone in the house, there was a strange tapping noise, either on the roof, or possibly on the bedroom window. I blamed the magpies at the time, and quickly closed all the windows.

It reminded me of the time when my grandma was living with my mum, a few years back. Grandma had started to “see things”, and my mum had put these hallucinations down to a combination of an overactive imagination and “her age”. My mum would take her an early morning cup of tea, and ask what sort of a night she’d had. It was always dreadful. Grandma enjoyed the role of martyr to the full. She NEVER slept. (Quite why she snored half the night then was another mystery.)

She’d say things like: “At 4 o’clock there was a cat trying to get into my bedroom.” My mum would ridicule this suggestion. “No,” she would say, “You must have dreamt it, it’s impossible.” She’d look out of the window – there was no way for a cat to get up onto the window ledge, and even if there was, it was way too narrow to sit on. Sometimes Grandma would see the “cat” in her room in the afternoon. She’d be coming back from the bathroom, and it would be sitting on her chair. She'd call my mum up in a panic. My mum would investigate – there was never a cat. She’d sneakily sniff my grandma’s cup of tea to see if she'd added a drop too much whisky…

A couple of months after Grandma died, my mum was woken by a scratching noise at the window – and there he was. The cat who had mastered the art of walking up brick-walls! My mum felt the inevitable guilt… but at the back of her mind I know she was thinking, “I bet that’s her, come back to prove a point!”

I don’t really believe in all the supernatural stuff, but when inexplicable things happen, it seems easier to come up with irrational explanations – but wherever the toothbrush came from, whoever brought it – why a bloody GREEN one? We’ve enough green in the garden.