Sandy's Garden ... Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo

My usual route on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays took me along Riggs Road and then Feus Road to avoid the centre of Perth.

But on Fridays I usually carried on along Glasgow Road past the junction with Riggs Road and down County Place to reach Paterson’s Music Shop where, hopefully, the pale-pastel coloured single sheet of flimsy paper with news of this week’s Top Twenty would be available.

I seem to remember that it cost a penny, but what pleasure it gave!

The name of Jo Stafford made regular appearances in these sought-after lists for many years, ‘Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo’ and ‘Goodnight, Irene’ featuring in them in 1950. But one Jo Stafford 1950s single … Capitol CL13367 … which failed to make the grade would become a huge hit for Frank Sinatra in 1957, having been a #1 best-seller in the USA Billboard charts of 1955 for pianist Roger Williams: and that was ‘Autumn Leaves’.

I have, right here beside me as I write these words, the most magnificent red and gold autumn leaf, a feather-like pattern in gold overlaying a rich burgundy base colour.

I plucked this particular example from a Cotinus tree just outside our back door, having collected several examples from the ground during the past few days and having finally discovered whence they came.

Although the Cotinus was planted a number of years ago, I don’t recall ever having seen leaves like these before, making me wonder if the tree is displaying the first symptoms of some dread disease.

While the leaves which made up the essentially red-and-yellow carpet were beautiful as long as the trees clung on to them … especially when they were lit by the autumn sun …, they quickly lost their beauty after they became orphaned and - well, ‘dead’ for lack of a better word.

From things of beauty they were quickly transformed into litter … natural, biodegradable litter, admittedly … but litter all the same. And I don’t like to look out on litter, which occasioned some rather wearisome hours collecting the debris, wondering how so much of it found its way into the most inaccessible places and wondering, too, how dead foliage could manage to gather and harbour so much rainwater.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t pernickety about collecting all the autumn leaves, reckoning that plenty more would come along within minutes of my supposedly ‘finishing’ my task; nor was I disappointed; for my appearing in the garden armed with brush, shovel and black discarded glass tub … excellent for dead-leaf collection … seemed to remind the wind that it should start blowing again in earnest, negating my efforts to tidy up.

But strangely, I rose on Saturday morning to discover that Friday’s wind had done me a favour by clearing away much of the leaf rubbish which I had left. I don’t how the wind was prompted to do it; could it have been my recollection of Jo Stafford singing, “Salagadoola mechicka boola / Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo / It'll do magic, believe it or not / Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo’? I may never know!