Dahlia rivalry

This weekend in London was gray and damp and miserable. On Saturday it drizzled, occasionally raining. I caught cabin fever - so we went down to the garden centre in Morden, South London. It adjoins on to a National Trust property - and we thought we might be able to go for a walk if the weather cleared. It did not.

I didn't buy any bulbs last fall and I'm not planning any major additions to the garden for the summer. The garden is pretty full. I have a problem. I overplant.

But the garden centre workers were setting up a dahlia display. Dahlias. I've never grown them. I've always imagined them to be fussy and difficult, slug prone and requiring pinching back and precise mixes of fertilizer - not to mention more sun and more growing space than I can probably provide.

But I saw this awesome orange and white dahlia. Big and blowsy. Tennessee orange at the base and white at the tips. I had to have it.

I asked the Vol-in-Law if he wanted to get a pack of dahlias. You never know what his response will be to something like that. He'll either be completely dismissive or he'll really contemplate and mull over his decision. He mulled. He looked at all the different colors and finally he asked me:

Would you mind if I got the Alabama dahlia?

The Alabama dahlia. Sure enough the dahlia he was looking at was crimson and white and in just the same pattern as the Tennessee dahlia. Now I had to ponder. I've seen that one in real life - it's really beautiful. So we got it. At the check out, I held up the two packets of dahlias and made them play fight - "grrr...arrrgh" while we were waiting for the cashier.

"Wouldn't it be funny," the Vol-in-Law said "if they really did fight and the UT dahlia was a small and puny and the Alabama dahlia was all big and beautiful?"

"No, that would not be funny at all," I said.


The Alabama dahlia at our hotel in Bayeux France