Emperor's new blooms

We wandered about paddocks, pretending to be ruminants.

- MICHELE HEWITSON

A friend once came across a seedling she didn't recognise in her garden. This often happens in gardens. I have no idea where my dark-red hollyhocks or the pure white aquilegia, which appear every year by the side of the mower bay, blew in from. They are happy accidents.

Gardens are made of such happy accidents. Anything you actually meant to grow, and spent far too much money on after going crazy with the seed catalogue, will probably be doomed to failure. I let things self-seed, which means that you have, at the end of summer, a garden made up of sticks. But it's worth a bit of scruffiness for all those free plants in place of expensive packets of seed.

My friend was very excited about her stray seedling. It could turn out to be something spectacular. She cosseted it, and fed it, and peered at it, frequently. Her seedling grew like a triffid. Then it flowered. It was a weed.

She was miffed. She posted a picture of the bloody thing on social media, along with the story of the seedling saga. Some ninny responded with that old chestnut: "A weed is just a flower in the wrong place." No it isn't. It's a bloody weed.