cotton on…

My Mum is growing cotton.

She found the seeds in a piece of cotton wool on the side of the road somewhere last year, I think it was Hay or Griffith- somewhere along the Murrumbidgee. So she thought she’d give it a go and see what happens.

Mum does stuff like that. Her garden at home has all types of vegies planted haphazardly in narrow spaces- wherever they can fit.

When we lived in the country she had a big garden. We used to tie the poddy lambs so they could just reach the seedlings of whatever we didn’t like to eat- poddy lambs always eat in a circle at the very end of their rope.

Now she has an arrangement of narrow terraces going down to the pool, but still manages to grow just as much.

The cotton conversation went something like:

‘Is your machine on?’ (In Mum speak, “machine” is the computer.)

‘Yes.’

‘I need you to do the w w w thing and find out how to grow cotton.’

So I googled it (that’s what she means when she says the w w w thing).

‘You plant it in potting mix, and turn the container a quarter turn a day,’ I say.

‘Oh that sounds like rubbish, Joanne,’ she says.

‘It’s what it says,’ I say.

So she did it her way- my Mum is an Aquarian after all…

And it’s growing. Really well.

The flowers have come out and in their place are the cotton fruits. They look like little pods and they’ll get bigger and bigger until they burst into little balls of cotton wool.

Just like in the photo above.

Apparently.

Now it looks like the photo below. So we’re watching, and waiting.