After the debates earlier in the year, about the aesthetics of the banana and its suitability as a garden plant, I have watched and waited. Waited for the moment the ugly flowering stems could be cut down. I'm told the flower itself has it's own phallic charms but the supporting stems go rapidly downhill, progressively shedding fibrous sheets that hang like dirty brown bandages. Two flowering stems had gone from aged to desperately decrepit and really had to go. One soft three metre stem was cut through easily at the base with a blunt weeding knife. Too easily - the sudden deadweight was very surprising and is as near to caber tossing as i've come. Vengefully I simply bent the other over till it snapped off with a succulent 'crack' like snapping giant celery. Not the ideal technique I know but very satisfying. The young stems remaining look much better with a bit of space between them and I think thinning the oldest may be the only way to make this monster any way acceptable to me.
Just acceptable.
Alex sits firmly in the banana "Yay!" camp and is deserving of a butttonhole.
Such synchronicity.
The first in Mason
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