Hydrangeas and heliotrope

It is at this time of the year that the hours of daylight start to slide towards equality with my home in Guyana, and in a few months it will be winter. In England this means cold. The last two weeks have been glorious. The last two days have been appalling and Britain has been bombarded with the news that worse is to come from the West Indies because of hurricanes there.

On the way back to Manchester from London I came by way of the Cotswolds which is one of the beautiful parts of England. I stopped at a lovely village of Burford to look at a garden which sold plants. The owner recognized my wife’s accent as he was stationed in Guyana at the time of Independence, before which it was known as British Guiana. We bought a load of plants to take back to Manchester, including hydrangea, found from Japan to the Himalayas, and even in the Philippines. They are also found in Guyana, but do not do very well, although I am sure they will grow more successfully in the interior at higher altitude. I also got some ornamentals to soften the fencing and one or two of my favourite plants called heliotrope (known in the UK as ‘Cherry Pie,’ which will produce its glorious blue flowers from May to October.

Shortly before coming back home I shall have looked around Manchester’s very large market, where fruit and vegetables from all over the world are delivered weekly and sold to supermarkets and shops throughout the northwest of England. In the early hours of the morning I shall see every possible fruit, many of which are grown in Guyana and none of which have come from Guyana. There will be mangoes from all over South America, but the fruit which I see in Bourda Market is not to be seen, and it would not be considered fit for sale in any market in Europe because it is so disfigured by Anthracnose fungus, a fungus which can be so easily controlled by the grower. We really ought to have an advisory service that can advise the growers of problems like this. There is a great deal of money to be made on the foreign exchanges of Europe. But we need to have advisors that show growers what to spray and how to spray it. We badly need to have doers not talkers if we are to prepare for the loss of much of our sugar market, and proper incentives for our growers, and so may your God go with you.