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My Familiar Forms
Oct. 2nd, 2010 05:15 pmThis morning I went to the monthly farmers' market. It is not a big market yet, but I hope it grows. There were more craft stalls than fruit and veg to look at. It is only the beginning of spring, so there was not much choice about: the tail end of the winter crops, with the spring ones not yet ready.
I bought some carrots and the bustling old woman said selling them said, quite nicely, 'Oh, you would pick carrots, I haven't weighed them yet.' She was quite flustered, poor thing, and asked me what price she had written for carrots on the board. 'Two-fifty a kilo, isn't it?' I looked and said, no, it was only two dollars a kilo, and she looked dubious and stuck her head round the corner to check for herself. At the same time, she weighed my carrots: four hundred grams. By this stage a couple more people had come to the stall and she was even more flustered, and she said, 'Shall we call it a dollar fifty, love?', which wasn't right for either of the two prices. I'm not a haggler, though, so I handed over my money and that was that.
At the next stall, I bought some lemons, five for a dollar, and the woman there said, 'There's only little ones left, so you can have ten for the price.'
So that is life: what you lose on the carrots you gain on the lemons.
After the farmers' market, my mother and I went to the Orchid Club's annual show. I was the youngest person in the room by twenty-four years. My mother was the next youngest person in the room. She entered the raffle: first prize, a framed picture of an orchid; second prize, an orchid; third prize, a pedestal fan; fourth and fifth prizes, orchids.
We also sat in on an orchid re-potting display by a gruff old man in a flannelette shirt. He turned out to be one of the big winners, with a whole table for all his orchids and ribbons. He knew a lot about orchids, but we had to ask him questions to draw it out. One woman said, 'So you don't cut the roots off when you re-pot them?' and he nearly had a heart attack. A shocked 'NO!' was all he could manage. He had been given some medium-sized bark chips to do the re-potting display, but he also had strong thoughts on that matter. He prefers to use small bark chips with his own mixture of coconut fibre and pearlite.
He was cagey about what to fertilise orchids with, saying he makes his own. Someone asked about using chook poo, and he said he didn't like it personally. He used some once, but it went mouldy and spoilt the look of his orchids, so he went into the kitchen and got 'the machine with the blades' (a food processor, we established by naming things with blades) and put the remaining chicken poo through that to chop it up. 'But my wife caught me,' he said sadly, 'and I had to buy her a new one.' I'm not surprised. I liked him, though.
Anyway, my mother and I agreed that our morning at the orchid show provided at least three dollars' worth of entertainment (that was the entry price). We enjoyed it so much that we decided to go the Agricultural Show at the end of the month. I haven't been to the Show for years.
I bought some carrots and the bustling old woman said selling them said, quite nicely, 'Oh, you would pick carrots, I haven't weighed them yet.' She was quite flustered, poor thing, and asked me what price she had written for carrots on the board. 'Two-fifty a kilo, isn't it?' I looked and said, no, it was only two dollars a kilo, and she looked dubious and stuck her head round the corner to check for herself. At the same time, she weighed my carrots: four hundred grams. By this stage a couple more people had come to the stall and she was even more flustered, and she said, 'Shall we call it a dollar fifty, love?', which wasn't right for either of the two prices. I'm not a haggler, though, so I handed over my money and that was that.
At the next stall, I bought some lemons, five for a dollar, and the woman there said, 'There's only little ones left, so you can have ten for the price.'
So that is life: what you lose on the carrots you gain on the lemons.
After the farmers' market, my mother and I went to the Orchid Club's annual show. I was the youngest person in the room by twenty-four years. My mother was the next youngest person in the room. She entered the raffle: first prize, a framed picture of an orchid; second prize, an orchid; third prize, a pedestal fan; fourth and fifth prizes, orchids.
We also sat in on an orchid re-potting display by a gruff old man in a flannelette shirt. He turned out to be one of the big winners, with a whole table for all his orchids and ribbons. He knew a lot about orchids, but we had to ask him questions to draw it out. One woman said, 'So you don't cut the roots off when you re-pot them?' and he nearly had a heart attack. A shocked 'NO!' was all he could manage. He had been given some medium-sized bark chips to do the re-potting display, but he also had strong thoughts on that matter. He prefers to use small bark chips with his own mixture of coconut fibre and pearlite.
He was cagey about what to fertilise orchids with, saying he makes his own. Someone asked about using chook poo, and he said he didn't like it personally. He used some once, but it went mouldy and spoilt the look of his orchids, so he went into the kitchen and got 'the machine with the blades' (a food processor, we established by naming things with blades) and put the remaining chicken poo through that to chop it up. 'But my wife caught me,' he said sadly, 'and I had to buy her a new one.' I'm not surprised. I liked him, though.
Anyway, my mother and I agreed that our morning at the orchid show provided at least three dollars' worth of entertainment (that was the entry price). We enjoyed it so much that we decided to go the Agricultural Show at the end of the month. I haven't been to the Show for years.