We slept beyond our agreed wake up time. Spike slept-on more than I.
My night's slumber was interrupted frequently -- sometimes at ten or twenty minute intervals -- because I was sleeping on my back to eliminate pressure on the bone at the end of each big toe. Both have 10-cent size, mild pressure sores that are healing slowly, or maybe not healing at all. Such is the lot of an ageing quadriplegic.
At one stage I was woken by a cacophonous riot of early morning birdsong. I do remember checking the clock on my bedside table and thinking, "4:21 guys? Give us a break. It's not even dawn."
The birds of Canberra cared not one hoot. Instead ... they hooted and whooped, chirped and cheroo-ed to their wee hearts' delight. And my disgruntlement.
On the first day back at work.
Later ... as I took a hurried breakfast (we still left late) Spike brought in a plant she had culled from the garden; a blackberry nightshade. It's mildly toxic if the leaves are consumed. The berries are harmless, apparently.
It's not deadly nightshade, of course. But it's still not staying in the ground.
As is becoming my wont, I asked Spike for a photo. It's a harmless looking wee soul but it has "nightshade" in its name. Call me hysterical but ... toast (proverbially) is what the wee fucker now is.
Solanum nigrum, Solanum americanum ... to be all Latin and botanical about it.
Gone. In any language.
Comentários