Troubled by thoughts of the Easter Bunny

11:36am Saturday 31st March 2007

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WHITE rabbits. Yes, I know it's a little premature for the first-day-of-the-month stuff, but I'm talking about the Easter Bunny. Judging by the holes in our lawn, he's hopped round early and has been digging for Australia, unless the giant Were-Rabbit got wind of my plans to grow my own veg.

I'm sure I can spin the daughter some sort of line, tomorrow being April Fool's Day, though the truth is it was Spit that dug the holes and if she was tunnelling anywhere it was to Tasmania, where she lives. Unless it was to Brisbane, to see her sister.

Spit and I went to school together, a long, long time ago, and I'm sure she used to say "black hares" rather than "white rabbits". We used to follow this up with, "Pinch, punch, first of the month and no returns", but you could counter with, "A punch and a kick for being so quick and no returns", which would probably get you a suspension from school these days, if not an ASBO.

Anyhow, I checked the white rabbits/black hares tradition on Wikipedia and it turns out there are more than 20 variations on it, so who knows?

I might email them a contribution about "piebald guinea pigs", just for the hell of it; apparently, playing pranks on Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, has become almost as much of an April Fool's tradition as Panorama's spaghetti trees and Big Ben going digital.

The reason why Spit had dug large holes in my lawn was because we were testing the Ph of the soil, which is something the books say you need to do before you can start growing anything.

I have never grown anything before, apart from weeds, so this is a journey into the unknown for me, although Spit knows her onions.

And her earlies, it turns out. I now have seed potatoes chitting or chattering or whatever they do in my lobby while Spit, having probed my soil (slightly acidic), has gone back to the southern hemisphere to deal with marauding possums and killer ants, leaving me helpless with a tray of sprouting spuds and numerous packets of seeds.

She kindly posted me a copy of The Vegetable And Herb Expert, along with instructions to plant during a waxing rather than a waning moon.

Armed with a smart new spade from Pextons, I was all set to go when, the very next day, it started to snow. Peering through the blizzard I took it as a sign that, waxing or waning, the time was not yet ripe.

I am now psyching myself up to have a go over Easter, should the fog ever lift (three cheers for the start of British Summer Time!). If I leave it much later, the potatoes might go beyond friendly chit-chat to answering back. As it is, those stalky little eyes are starting to follow me round the room.

OKAY, SO talking plants aren't the norm (Audrey II in Little Shop Of Horrors - which was, to be precise, a singing, man-eating plant - is the exception that proves the rule), but talking to plants is more widely accepted.

Well, at least by Prince Charles.

I have tried conversing with my houseplants, making encouraging comments to my peace lily ("My, haven't you grown!") and complimenting the geraniums on their new flowers, but I find the conversations distinctly one-sided.

Still, that's pretty much like many of my regular conversations, particularly with members of my family, which generally involve downloading one's day without listening to what the other person is saying. We're all guilty of this at times, but my mum and my 16-year-old nephew, Dan, took this to a new level recently.

Dan, I should explain, is lead singer in a heavy metal band called Whiplash and does a lot of shouting and not a little swearing, judging the number of times he had to mute the recording he played to us at Christmas.

My mother, on the other hand, has a massive, Barry Manilow-style crush on a Dutch violinist/ classical maestro called Andre Rieu, who is perma-tanned and has flowing hair and gleaming teeth and sends "big hugs" on his website.

Recently, mum was on the phone to Dan, trying to get him to appreciate good music by playing Mr Rieu at him, long distance. "Very nice, Granny," he said, as the Viennese Waltz shook the foundations of their French farmhouse and reverberated down the line. "That's great. Very romantic."

Mum was thrilled her grandson was taking note. It was only when she turned Andre down that she realised he'd had his MP3 player in this ear the whole time.

What was he listening to? Motorhead, Killed By Death. Romantic or what?