HANDS THAT DO GARDENING DISHES CAN FEEL AS SOFT AS YOUR FACE

My parents stayed the weekend with us and when my mother, who could quite easily have been the worlds highest paid hand model, opened the boot of her car when she arrived and handed me that Dahlia up above with her lovely red painted long fingernails contrasting nicely against its black leaves I could have kissed her.

So I did.

Up until recently gardening, plants and blossoms were all things someone else did. Not me. I wouldn't have known this was a Dahlia only she told me and have in the past been known to have spent many weeks cultivating what eventually turned out to be a weed.

But not my Mother. No.

It is a constant fascination of mine as to how she manages to keep her lovely long fingernails from chipping especially as she spends so much time working in her garden. If you met her you would never in a million years think that she's the kind of woman who would get down there and get her hands stuck into the soil but get stuck in she does.

To me her garden is a kind of miniature Botanic Gardens and now that summers here and the little I have in the ground is blossoming like crazy I can see that compared to hers my garden is a little bit bald too green.

So on Saturday when I saw her standing there with a hoe in her pretty hands tackling my weed ridden flowerbed in front of my house I was delighted and plied her with cups of tea to keep her going but only allowing her three minute breaks so she didn't lose momentum. Well, she is off travelling around the world mid August so who knows when she'll visit again.

Probably NEVER after my lack of gardening gloves gave a large crucified look to the palm of her right hand.

I can see her now pointing her long pillarbox red index nail at me and shaking it. "I read what you wrote about me"

But I'm learning. You know, things like; serving biscuits with the tea may have increased her sugar levels enough to have a brand new flowerbed dug out in my back garden. That kind of thing.