Oops! and Eek! and Aargh!
Oops! Clematis Climbing the Hedge
The language styles of garden bloggers are as varied as the gardens they tend. Some bloggers think before they commit, while others let their words loose to whizz around like random insects on the wing. Take three tiny, polite words of exclamation - 'Oops!' and 'Eek!' and 'Aargh!'
Oops!
Gardeners make mistakes. Some gardeners make more mistakes than others. And some of the mistakes they make are HUGE (like planting a Clematis Montana to climb up a tiny weeping blossom tree). Others may be quite tiny - like forgetting to turn the hoses off, thus making a small puddle of water in the driveway. Oh well - never mind - no harm done...
It's handy to have a written word to use as ones personal reaction to mistakes both big and small. In Moosey's Country Garden the mistake word is 'Oops'. It's used rather a lot. Hmm...
Aargh! Dandelion Weeds
Eek! and Aargh!
In a busy garden, random nasty things often suddenly leer up out of the greenery and knock the gardener over, mentally speaking. One needs a gentle exclamation to convey the worrisome nature of these situations.
'Eek' is the Moosey word for insignificant little surprises - a dead mouse in the hallway, a tiny piece of oxalis weed, a rose left for dead in a drying-out pot, and so on. 'Aargh!' is reserved for the slightly more serious, the scary, and the unthinkable - a live rat in the hallway (thanks, cats), a host of noisy weeds discovered partying in the middle of a quiet garden border, or something unpleasant that one of dogs is devouring.
Don't Worry...
Don't ever worry that the Moosey Garden is ever completely out of control. For every mistake registered there is at least one purposeful and successful gardening outcome. And the Head Gardener is nothing if not brutally honest in her reactions to the garden's little (and big) surprises. She knows what she's most scared of, and tries to avoid these obvious nasties - like walking over high suspension footbridges, and gardening near wasp nests.
Aargh! No Munching Rotten Things...
Phew - there are no high suspension footbridges in the Moosey Garden...