An attack of bloody stupid.

[hirez]

We've got this tree at the bottom of the garden, next to the shed. You can tell it's a bit of a character by the ungrammatical use of the word 'this'. If it had been 'a' tree, then it would have been an undistinguished specimen that told bad jokes or perhaps droned on about SQL Server at otherwise splendid dinner parties.

Hm. 'splendid' and 'dinner party'. Perhaps not.

Anyway. This tree, right? If it had been 'that' tree or even 'your' tree, you would have known that it had just tracked mud in through the house or vomited lager-residue over one of the spider plants. (It's like a spider baby, only in a pot.)

However, the tree in question has done none of these things because it exists in consensus reality, rather than the considerably more interesting version that I prefer to lark around in. In fact, it's done bugger all apart from put up with me hacking back the ivy that surrounded it and bring forth splendid purple spears of flowers that smell excellent and remind me of being tiny because the things used to be everywhere when Cheltenham had more piles of rubble and flattened buildings. That was part of the attraction and why I was so pleased to find it lurking at the bottom of the garden. The breed were/are well known for inhabiting bomb-sites.

And like some dreadful halfwitted human-impersonating muppet I'd forgotten what the poor bloody bush is called.

Buddleia. If I'm going to have a favourite non-native flowering shrub, that'll be the one.

Comments

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Mine is in the pond crater and (as is the way of these things) is absolutely smothered in butterflies.
Oddly enough, had similar name-failure when pointing at s as 'thing that the grapes are spreading on to' Yes *grapes* there's your global warming right there mate!

[redcountess]

We have two, one came from the other, through the paving stones, they grow like billy-o in these parts. I didn't realise the flowers had a scent though. As well as attracting butterflies, birds love the seed pods after they've finished flowering, hence me being hesitant to cut them back, until they were blocking all the light and taking over the back garden.

[reddragdiva]

I think you could hack it back with an axe and pour copper sulphate into the soil and it would spring back in a month.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

It appears so. The one here had got a bit leggy so was pretty much hacked back to a stump last year.

'Bollocks to that' it went, and had a bloody good grow this year.

[jendama.livejournal.com]

Now you know why I'm always rambling about ours. We have three butterfly bushes (light purple, vivid purple with variegated leaves, and dark purple). They smell wonderful and do attract lots of bees, butterflies, moths and other fluttery things.

Glad to hear you have a nice bush (no laughing in the back). They can withstand all sorts of pruning torture and still come back. The only thing that I've found that kills them is too much water on the roots.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Ta. It came off the end of a lump of writing.

It's entirely like being in hack-mode.

[miss-soap.livejournal.com]

I *love* Buddleia. It reminds me of being very small and sitting agog underneath my grandmother's enormous specimen. I used to call it the Butterfly Tree since, in midsummer, it was always festooned with Painted Ladies and Peacock butterflies.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I'm sensing a bit of a theme here. Good.

[kathbad]

Ohhh, Buddleia is one of my absolute favourites too.

My Dad always calls it the Butterfly Bush, as it attracts so many of them. I remember sitting in the garden as a kid watching the Buddleia swarming with a loads of different butterflies...

Thank you for the happy-memory jog *g*

[aeia.livejournal.com]

There's loads of them in Bristol, we have some growing round the back of the house.

The biggest patch I've seen is on the river path heading out east along the Avon. We cycled there last weekend and there's absolutely loads of buddleia in places. It was late in the evening so not many butterflies but we did see a kingfisher!

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

Andrew Swarf and his Missus, Tinne, have just moved into smogo and blonde_venus's old house, seeing as they now live in a pub.
I've been round there umpteen times before, but last night we went over to munch curry with the new tennants.
I wandered outside and and suddenly noticed that the buddleia tree that's outside the kitchen is actually growing out of their wall!!!!!! Those trees are mad.
The other thing I noticed, was that as it was dark and the butterflies had gone to bed, the Buddleia was being eaten alive by hundreds of cute little moths instead. Poor tree never gets a break...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Them trees love a big 'airy moth rubbing itself on their sex-bits. Filth!

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

Haha! I was watching moth pr0n!

[girfan.livejournal.com]

Andrew?!?!?
I'm sure you meant to say Chris Swarf!

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

So you didn't hear about our wife swap then?

:oD

[spride.livejournal.com]

Buddleia's great. Try Ceanothus, too. Similar but with smaller closer-packed blue flower spikes.

[spride.livejournal.com]

Oh, and it's OK to like certain aspects of being middle-aged and bourgeois. Your language reveals the inner conflict about it, and it does you credit. But you held out against it longer than anyone else :-)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

It's not so much 'holding out' as 'just a bit rubbish at it'.

I trust I shall take after my aunt & uncle who live close to the middle of nowhere in a small but rambling house filled with things that they've made themselves. Like uncle Martin's study, which is more or less a lean-to perched on top of the bathroom. It look out over the back field filled with British bike-scrap, collected by the cousin who's yet to leave home.

[spride.livejournal.com]

I see you more as Sir Henry (Rawlinson End), only with leather-bound Nephilim CDs in the Library.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

A lifestyle to which I look forward to becoming accustomed.