Word-fill

Do our brains have a fixed disk space for certain bits of information, and can that space be enlarged if necessary?

I was wondering about this because my own brain seems to have a remarkably small disk space allotted to names of flowers, as you may have noticed from my last post's reference to Bordeaux-coloured ground-covering flowers. Not very precise, and although I had heard the name of the plant only that day whilst chatting to my neighbour who has a much larger disk-space for plant names (he of the immaculate garden stuffed to the brim with interesting thought-provoking flora), I still couldn't remember it when I came to write it down.

When I was at university, I read Arabic and Islamic Studies and one of our erudite profs - a Scot whose nose betrayed a certain enjoyment of a tipple or two on a regular basis - told us that he had reached maximum capacity for learning new Arabic words. In other words, he could no longer remember any new words he came across. As he already had many hundreds in his pocket, I'm not sure this presented him with too much of a problem, but I wonder how many names of plants he knew.

My capacity for remembering Arabic words was, surprisingly but thankfully, considerably better than for names of plants, especially those Latin ones which go in one ear and straight out the other without passing Go or collecting £200. I doubt I could ever have studied medicine for the same reason. Never would I have had the chance to pass out in an operating theatre because I would never have got that far, falling at the first hurdle of remember reams of Latin names. Actually, I wouldn't ever have even got that far as I'm crap at maths and mostly crap at science. I say 'mostly' because I got a 'B' in my chemistry 'O' level, but I recognised my limits in that subject and despite tempting cajolings from my chemistry teacher who used to pick his nose in class and wipe the bogeys off on the back of his tie, I did English instead. We didn't have Media Studies options in those days.

I think the plant's name begins with 'G', and I've concluded that it was carried off by aliens in search of a pot plant without a pot for their outer spacial Mother's Day.

Sup-planted

In my garden, where there was a ground-covering plant with Bordeaux-coloured flowers, there is now a patch of bare earth. Why, is a mystery.

It doesn't look like it was dug up, or scrabbled up by a dog. It was not left to rot nearby; it has disappeared. There is no evidence of someone hopping over the fence and stealing it. Anyway, it was just a plant - nothing special - and there are two others exactly the same, and three others with white flowers within a few centimetres which remain untouched.

I discovered the mystery this evening when I went out to water the garden after deciding that the three drops that fell this afternoon were not sufficient to water a flea pit let alone thirsty vegetables and Japanese grass.

It's been odd weather. Since we put the pool up, it's either been windy, rainy or intermittently pleasant. The boys managed to have a dip today, la Fête des Mères here in France, and I recorded it for posterity to show them having fun on June 3 in the pool! About time too; it's usually revving up for out and out totally annihilating heat by now.

My youngest had made me a beautiful (chunky) red and gold papier maché bracelet at school, and a lovely card, and my eldest drew me a picture with me looking very slim. NG also got a picture from my youngest, looking a bit less slim, which, fortunately, made her laugh, if a little ruefully. Out of the crayons of babes... as they say.

Lunch included some lettuce from the garden which, quite frankly tasted exactly the same as the stuff in the shops. I suppose my consolation is that it's organic, but I'm certainly not in paroxysms of euphoria over the exquisiteness of its delicate flavour.

I wonder if my plant-nicker will come after my veggies too. S/He/It missed the fat juicy strawberries (thanks to buckets of recent rain), so I'm left to wonder if a devastating virus just hit my plant and wiped it off the face of the earth leaving no traces, not even a spot of shaken earth.

Should I call in CSI?