Another One Bites the Dust

Yesterday I found my newly bought fuchsia plant lying forlorn on the stoep – without its plastic pot! We’d had some sun lately, so it was looking very dry and withered; a little sticky thing with curled up leaves and stringy grass-like roots. I had a quick look around the stoep and immediate garden, but there was no sign of the pot. Since it had now started to rain pretty hard, I placed the poor plant on top of an old ceramic pot full of weeds, and hoped for the best.

I looked hard at Little Monkey when I went inside. I know she steals empty plastic plant pots from the stoep and cavorts round the garden with them in her mouth, smiling and shaking her head. “Look what I’ve got!” The pot is completely unusable afterwards; full of teeth mark holes and crushed flat.

Today, quite by accident, I found the plastic pot floating in the pool and fished it out. Surprisingly, it was more or less in tact; just a little squashed, with no evidence of teeth marks. I placed the fuchsia back in its pot, and left it in the corner of the stoep, looking pretty sorry for itself. As any plant in my garden could tell it, you have to be a survivor to – well, to survive here!

But I am still wondering how Little Monkey managed to remove the fuchsia from its pot without leaving teeth marks!