Today is Tuesday! Which is the day on which Frau Shokker should be riding in on her celestial chariot to fawn over her (currently) favourite cat, consume three mugs of coffee (at least) and a Cornish pasty, and somehow find time to do some gardening. But, this week, ’tis not to be!

For, you see, The Frau is somewhat prone to awkward events. These fall into three main groups:

• Water
• Stairs
• Her impressions of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland

and, this week, it has been the turn of stairs. But, sometimes, the groups overlap. And so, m’luds, I present my evidence.

Waterfalls

We have the two incidents: The Drowning of the Camera and The Incident of the Pond Iris and Posterior, amply demonstrating Frau’s propensity to drop objects into a pond and to narrowly avoid entering the water herself.

Stairs

The Frau is a well-known wearer of gold boots and even diamond-encrusted ones. But The Foot of the Stairs is evidence of her desire for variety and a boot of a different kind.

Off With Their Heads

This is not so much a case of The Frau’s accidental happenstances impacting on her but, rather, the consequence of her youthful (in comparative terms) exuberance as she approaches the tasks of a gardener. I give you the incident of Bella’s Decapitation. In an earlier post, I introduced you to one of two Isoplexis “Bella” in my garden. Here’s one that I planted:

In that post I mentioned that the other (which had been planted by the Frau) was hidden by other plants. Anxious to reveal another nice flower head to the naked eye, I suggested that Frau might like to prune back some of the surrounding plants. Which she dutifully did, in the process managing to accidentally decapitate the Isoplexis. Still, it was possible to view the stump.

Togetherness

And so it came to pass that, one Tuesday, Frau suggested that it might be an idea to deadhead one of my roses, Wild Edric.

Now Edric is a prolific flowererer (still going strong) but, like all roses, is going to have some nice new blooms and some that are on their way out. And we all know that pruning encourages more flowers. “That’s a good idea,” I responded to her suggestion, forgetting that Edric is planted right next to the pond here. And some of its branches do grow over the water. Faced with the sudden realisation of this risk-posing situation, I went out to warn her to be careful and to prepare the lifebelt for throwing.

But no worries as the Frau approached me, looking a bit sheepish, and presented me with the nice fresh bloom that she’d removed by accident.

Fortunately a suitable container was to hand and the bloom spent several days filling my kitchen with its scent. The Frau proceeded to finish the job she’d started, fortunately not falling into the pond in the process. As she packed up for the day, I took a couple of photos of her results.

Which goes to show that water and decapitation do, sometimes, go together.

Meanwhile, she’s done it on the stairs again. Unfortunately, this time, her posterior stayed out of the way and she landed awkwardly on another part of her anatomy. I’m sure you all want to wish her a speedy recovery.

Personally, I can think of far easier ways to get OH to bring breakfast in bed.