ODD THINGS ABOUT FACEBOOK & GARDENS

I’m still not used to the idea that when I post a picture, it goes to the pages of all my 2220 some ‘friends.’ It seems very odd. But then, when I went to bed last night, I had 2292 friends. “Ah,” I thought, “tomorrow I’ll be up to 2300.
This morning I had 2226 friends. ?? More than someone had defriended me. Why? Well, possibly because I don’t write to any of them or talk to any of them or send them non-existing farm animals. I’m no fun as a ‘friend.’
Which of course is because I don’t see something on a screen as a friendship situation. It’s not as though they’ll come over and help me pick up all the Tim Horton’s paper cups the wind and the litterers have blown and thrown into my yard. One of the disadvantages of living two blocks from a major bunch of fast food outlets (*McDonalds, Burger King, Dairy Queen, Subway – the whole restaurant district called, ‘the Hub”), is all the burger wrappers, milkshake containers and french frie cardboards that get discarded as some undoubtedly shambling ramshackle arniverous beast raised in a barn, eats its way down the street; (Chomp. Munch. Bite. Mmphf) talking with its mouth full, burgers-with-beer-chaser) till it reaches my corner, smack dab on the way home. ‘SAY! THERE’S JUST THE FLOWER GARDEN TO THROW MY GARBAGE IN!”
What is it about a flower garden, mulched for the winter that attracts litter? Underneath lie dormant poppies, red & pink, glowing white shasta daisies, tall-stemmed zinnias in rainbow colours, sky blue gladiolas, cone flowers with their goldy middles with hollyhocks and iris mingling like commuters at the edges. But all the eater sees is leaves protecting the whole till spring is actually here with no frost in its tail.
How did I get onto this? Actually, as a gardener at the end of March, it is hard not to be describing the glories about to be launched on the street. And my little patch is definitely a street garden. All the land I have is out front. What would’ve once been called a cottage garden. It runs down the side and trickles across the front.
Last year I mingled renkus on tall bamboo poles among the flowers. Renkus are short haiku with their own charm. And as next month is National Poetry Month, I should prop some up again, here and there.
At any rate, I was discussing the vanishing friends who likely discover I am not the chatty type, not even on the phone. I am busy, of course, being a writer. And so much of Facebook is fake. This sort of on-screen friendship isn’t high on the list unless they speak up fetchingly and engage me.
And so they delete me, the ones that are actually expecting friendship out of Facebook rather than silent friend numbers. Perhaps if I did assign them a number, it would make it clearer that our relationship is distant and stiff. The pictures on my web page are NOT mine. If you send me a mythical farm animal, poker invitation or flower, I’ll delete you immediately as not being in the loop.
What I want is silence and numbers. What I’ll settle for is a fresh, original message with a charming profile picture changed now and then to yet another, an engaging comment to which it is possible to respond. I am fond of the friends who write in a foreign language, even foreign script, that I am not expected to understand. I am happy not to hear anything at all. NOTE – (Reading this back, how cold and unfriendly I sound, yet how warm and interested I feel inside).