I’ve walked along Malthouse Road more times than I can remember. On both sides of the road. And travelling in both directions. And yet somehow in all those times I had, I have never noticed the hanging basket house before.
Have I always had my attention elsewhere when I have walked past? Staring at the pavement in front of my feet perhaps? Or looking at the cars parked next to the pavement? Or across the road at the houses on the other side of the road? If not, is this hanging basket house a new phenomena? Have suddenly tens of hanging baskets gone up on the front of this house overnight?
On closer inspection, it doesn’t look like it. The baskets and their brackets show signs of age. They look to have been attached to the wall for a long time. Have they only just been put out for the summer? Having spent the cold and damp winter months in storage somewhere to the rear of the house; and so when I have glanced at the house in passing previously, they haven’t been there?
Or is it that all along I’ve been walking around blind, oblivious to the obvious cornucopia of hanging baskets? I didn’t actually stop dead in the middle of the street and stare open mouthed like some kind of slack jawed yokel. But I did slow enough to take the scene in.
There were hanging baskets in all shapes, sizes and colours, all at different heights from a couple of feet above the ground to the ones besides the upstairs windows. All affixed to the red brick walls of the Victorian terraced house. Some were lined up with each other, but a number weren’t, giving it a quaint, higgledy-piggledy look to them.
None of them were in full bloom yet, but you could imagine the kaleidoscope of colour that will appear there over the coming weeks and months. The little paved front yard didn’t miss out either. A variety of different sized metal tubs sat there with more earth sat in them and the early shoots of green poking out or the dark brown, well-watered earth.
Now that I’ve noticed the hanging basket house, I’ll be looking for it every time I walk down Malthouse Road. Something will trigger inside my little pea brain and shout ‘look out for the hanging basket house’, whilst another part of it will be wondering if there will be more hanging baskets this time? Will the whole of the house be lost in a smothering of flowers? Will it attract visitors from all over the town? The county? The country?
Will people flock to see the “Hanging Basket Gardens of Crawley”? One of the modern Seven Wonders of the World?
That might be a little bit over the top I suppose.