This wee beastie...

has been living cheek by jowl with me for nigh on ten years.

Hubs has often said

"Time to move on LL"

Speak for... lets get shot!

Today Mary Poppins-like I carried her carefully out.

Sadly her day has come.

When she first came into my life, such a sweet, wee, shrinking violet sort of a seedling thing she was.

Gently I cosseted and cared for her.  She responded well.

She grew and grew and then some.

Boys climbed high, into her wonderful frothy satellite style coiffure...

never to be seen again.

"Jack!" their mothers were heard to cry.

Seeds fell like confetti at a posh wedding.

All was good in the world.

I cut her down to dry and preserve her.  Secure in the knowledge her babies would appear   in the very place their mother had majestically stood.

What I didn't know was...

she had a dark side...

BLACK even.

Not being the brightest or sharpest hoe in the gardener's shed, 

I had no idea.

Her name was GIANT HOGWEED.

How was I to know?  No one had introduced us.

A 'friend' had given her to me as a gift.

Along with Japanese Knotweed her garden cred is zilch...
worse than.
I soon found the error of my foolish trusting ways,
as her offspring popped up everywhere.


Short of a flame Percy Thrower (remember him?) 
I was seriously in horticultural hara-kiri. 


Still for old times sake, and the many jaw-dropping moments she created in my drawing room, I stayed true, only to her you understand?


That is until today.


Sorry, dear trusty pal, I knew you were only doing what comes naturally
and I shall mourn your demise.

***