Day 90 - Feelthy peectures?

I sort of half-promised you that I would tell you about the next stage of my career, and the progress of my next job with all its startling revelations about the world of professional horticulture. I make a lot of promises, and I try to keep them, but I'm not always as prompt in carrying them out as I pretend. On this occasion, I am going to take a breather while I contemplate the futility of trying to do what I am attempting.

I have to admit, my readership has dropped off dramatically. I have taken soundings on this. It seems that it is too much of an obligation to have to read a post every day, even if it is interesting and informative. In a way I get that, but then I ask, how much time do we spend sitting on the toilet, trying to decipher what it says in tiny writing on the back of the shampoo bottle that is there just out of reach on the wash-basin? How much time do we spend flicking through our facebook timeline or twitter feed, reading fragments as fast as we can, just so we can decide to ignore them as irrelevant junk that is the price of having friends or followers?

1000 words of my wisdom, accompanied by pretty pictures has to be better than that. Yet still my diagnostics tell me that my readership is plummeting. I find that the majority of my readers come from the United Kingdom (I question the word United in these days of turmoil), then a large contingent from France, vying for second place with my American followers. I investigate the reason for my strong French support, and find that none of them is reading my blog at all, and that somehow all my French interest comes from referrals from various dodgy sites and the furtive search for pornographic images. How they end up on a gardening blog beats me. Bonjour Messieurs. Feelthy peectures? I have images of manure, sexual reproduction in plants, and yesterday a highly phallic Dracunculus. Did you get off on that?

Actually, it's really pissing me off. The last time I wrote a daily saga on my blog, when I compiled my memoir of a broken man, hundreds of my hits came from Russian porn addicts. This time they are French. Same difference. They're not looking for what I am writing about. And I am not prepared to give them what they want. So why don't they leave me alone. Mine is a different kind of fantasy.

I fantasise about people reading what I write. But that's a step too far. I'm not going to find that on the internet. Or in a publisher's office. I need to look for something else. No matter that my wife encourages me in this gardening thing, tells me that it is interesting. 1000 words a day is too much for our quick-fix culture. Not when people would rather be sitting in front of their screens with no trousers on playing with their Transformers. Forgive the smutty analogy. I've tried the gardening, but it seems I'm better suited to lewdness. My French readers have obviously caught up on that.

Anyway, sorry to disappoint you, my readers across the channel, this is a blog about plants and gardens. This is not for you. This is for the genteel, not for sex-obsessed onanists leering at their screens in self-imposed solitary confinement. This is a blog your mum could read. So here's a nice picture of a plant.

This one is Rhodochiton atrosanguineum. An attractive little climber. For the benefit of my French readers, it is commonly known as the Horse's Dick plant. Not one to send as a Mothers' Day present.

Enough of this. Tomorrow I will get serious. I promise.