I HAVE been half expecting coach trips of Japanese and American tourists, loaded with cameras, to come visiting our house.
Once word got out it wouldn’t be long before Summer Wine bus trips were diverted as an additional attraction to take in the view of my front gutter.
“Sid’s Cafe, Nora Battye’s, Auntie Wainright’s shop and the hanging gardens of Babylon. Photographs featuring the owner are available for a fee.”
“Is this a Northern tradition?” a soft southerner from London might ask.
“It’s a dying art, lad. It’s taken years to get it just right. Nah then, it’s £5 for a photo standing outside or I’ll go to the foot of our stairs for £7.50. I can’t say fairer than that.”
“But what’s the secret of the lush vegetation?”
“Bird poo, lad.”
My hanging gardens is the growth that has accumulated in my front gutter. To be honest, it’s not something I noticed until my friend Brian said: “By heck, but your grass needs cutting” and he wasn’t referring to the lawn.
One particular patch of gutter was lush with turf. I knew the gutter needed mending at a leaky connection and had intended to ask Brian to do the job because he is a roofer by profession.
That was some weeks ago and now the turf has acquired two bushes and the beginnings of what appears to be a palm tree. Very exotic.
The original hanging gardens of Babylon were supposedly built by King Nebuchadnezzar 2,600 years ago. He planted vegetation on the tiered roof of his palace to please his wife who longed for the plants of her homeland.
I reckoned those original hanging gardens happened by accident, just like mine. When the queen was eating fruit, she probably spat out pips and stones and the vegetation grew. And, of course, the bird poo helped.
Brian told me that the stuff that grows in gutters is mostly caused by birds.
They sit, do what comes naturally, and the seeds they have eaten land in the gutter in the perfect environment in which to grow. Propagation in the raw. And on my roof. Can I get a grant for it?
Anyway, the bus trips are cancelled. Brian has sorted it out.
