Beware the ivy of Paraguay. Or Uruguay: it seems to answer to either name, or indeed to Clematicissus striata, if you speak clearly. The little lightweight climber was initially charming. It arrived in the garden from a neighbour’s, unseen through the ivy on the trellis. It infiltrated the Trachelospermum. It found its way to a neighbour’s Japanese maple. It was only when I noticed the light gold of the maple was turning dark green that I spotted the culprit. By this time, it was everywhere. Each time I examine the plants on the trellis (they include ivies, Trachelospermum (or shall we call it Confederate jasmine, coming from below the Mason-Dixon line?) rose and Clematis Perle d’Azur (precious and increasingly rare) a delicate little shoot of the dreaded South American ivy is there.
Shall I talk my way into the (rarely lived in) neighbour’s? Shall I call the Council’s pest officer? It’s probably just a London thing: it’s been so mild here. There hasn’t been a frost within recent memory. It tempts us to plant all sorts of tender things. But look very carefully at tempting tender treasures; give them an inch and they can take on ell.
Ell? Apparently (I looked it up) the distance from your fingertips to your elbow – but isn’t that called a cubit? In any case it’s, give or take, eighteen inches. It was good enough for Noah, building his ark, and it’s still the basic unit for traditional brown furniture. Try it: Your chest of drawers will either be three feet or four feet six or six feet wide). Not millimetres.
But don’t get me on to the folly of the metric system. Napoleon had lots of good ideas, but the metre was not one of them. Nor the litre – which is why French markets still often use the livre and even the pint. As for the millimetre, and architects specifying a garage door should be thousands of millimetres wide… Blame the tyrant.
