Inside An English Country Garden

Six Word Photo Story Challenge: Freestyle

We just want to be together

Well, these two characters in the photograph look as though they might have had a tiff, sat miles apart on that bench.

When my wife and I stumbled across this display in an open garden we both looked at each other and said in unison — “Flobabdob.”

‘Watch With Mother’ was the first children’s programme I can remember seeing in the mid-1950s on a grainy black and white television set at my grandmother’s house. My parents couldn’t afford a TV and just had a wireless (radio).

For me, the highlight of the programme was watching Bill and Ben, two little men made of flower pots, who lived at the bottom of a typical English suburban garden.

They were marionettes and their strings could be clearly seen as their puppeteers, out of camera shot, manipulated their movements. Their catchphrase was — “Flobabdob.”

They would come alive and emerge from their pots only when the gardener went for his lunch break. Then they would have some sort of adventure in the gardener’s absence, but as soon as they heard him returning, they would rush back to their plant pots and hide.

Just before disappearing they would say goodbye to the Little Weed who grew between the pots. The Little Weed would screech a tremulous reply, “Weeeeeeeeeed!”

Now that the frosts have gone, it’s safe for gardeners in the UK to remove delicate plants from their pots and plant out in the borders.

What the discarded plant pots do in the potting shed while I have lunch is their business!

Thanks again to Mary Chang Story Writer for providing the Six Word Photo Story Challenges. I wonder if Mary has ever performed one of her famous head-stands with a plant-pot balanced on her feet?

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