alex's big banana bouquet

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.

not in my bouquet - 2

The banana has flowered.  

 

I am unimpressed.  This is widely known and a source of amusement. I haven't been able to find many redeeming features after growing this plant for 3years.  The initial excitement of the rapid growth to fifteen feet from an eight-inch baby sucker and its enormous ribbed leaf blades soon waned and I now know better.  The leaves get ripped to tatters with the gentlest breath of wind, the tatters hanging on till turning brown to compliment the tatty dead bits remaining from the winter. From October to May it has sat as tatty as a tatty thing can look and that is a long time to be tatty - fifteen foot of tattiness too.  So now it has flowered - mustard and brown - yum!

To avoid the eight messy months of messiness this really is a plant best not grown by yourself.  Just admire it (if you must) at the height of its warm season best in someone else's garden.  

Like mine.

(thanks to malcolm for the photos - my camera couldn't cope with such ugliness)

talking dead banana

Work in the garden today, to clear some of the dead stems and make some space for new things, was really a long chat interrupted with only

occasional action. I didn't get much done.

For some reason, it wasn't a particularly cheery day, the garden had a steady stream of visitors - most of whom wanted to talk. Apart from the all-weather regulars there were the first of the returning fair-weather ones, nice to see some of them back (though not all - one or two will need watching again this year), and new faces too.

People were very complimentary and congratulated the good work. Lots of comments re:global warming and everything being in flower 'this time of year'. I explained, increasingly automatically as the day wore on I'm sure, that the plants were doing what they do at the right time and reeled off the list of plants that flower in winter, and got them to sniff the coronilla (now staked) that was performing today. Some days it seems to have no fragrance whatsoever but when the temperature is just right it is smashing.

Had to advise that poking the goldfish with a stick was not a good idea.

A slightly confusing conversation with a lady - about the banana not being dead. She wanted to know what would replace the dead banana. I said it just looked tatty and wasn't dead so nothing. For some reason she clearly thought this was ridiculous. It sort of went back and forth between us for a minute until she demanded to know "why, in that case, is it crisp and brown?". "It's winter! The leaves fall off!" I replied rather bluntly.

I try and answer questions about the garden but am not at my best whilst off-balance, on one leg, half-doubled and trimming helichrysum. Some people do pick their moment.