What is Santa's favourite pizza?

 (Does Santa even eat pizza?)

OK brace yourselves, it's the run-up to Christmas, so it's time for some truly dreadful Christmas jokes. I did try to find ones with a gardening slant, but alas, it was not that simple.

What, then, is Santa's favourite pizza?

 

 I mean, Santa eats mince pies, and drinks sherry, we all know that: he probably gets a lot of those mini-pork pie things as well, the ones where the ratio of crust to air, jelly, and meat is strongly biaised against the meat part...  I can sort of imagine him eating a bowl of thick, warming soup, with crusty bread, perhaps....

 

 

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Bulbs: when are they not fit for planting?

Last week, I was carrying out an end-of-year garden tidy-up, and had almost finished for the day, when Mrs Client asked me, very tentatively, if I'd be prepared to do some planting, for her.

Nothing unusual about that: I plant things all the time, it is rather part and parcel of being a gardener... so of course I said yes, no problem, and I was handed a boxful of packs marked Tulip bulbs, cultivar “Cherry Delight”:

 

 They are rather delightfully red, aren't they?

So why was the Client asking me, in such an apologetic way, if I would plant them? I found out when I opened the box.....

 

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Ivy Myth No. 3: “Ivy damages house walls”.

 Ah, this old chestnut!

Yes, if you live in an old, stone-built cottage with lime mortar, ivy can utterly destroy your house. It squeezes tiny stems into the soft mortar, then they grow and expand, and in no time it is dislodging the actual stones, and you are in dead trouble.

But with a modern red-brick house, built to modern standards, with modern mortar: then no, this simply won't happen. The ivy will cling to the bricks, and to the mortar, but as long as they are all in good condition, it won't penetrate, and it won't damage the bricks.

Personally, I think it's extremely unsightly.....

 

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