Sandy's Garden ... Drone

‘Drone’ has become an important word in my home life.
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There was no way of avoiding ‘drone’ in my garden; it was very difficult to avoid ‘drone’ in the comparative seclusion of my house. ‘Drone’ had grown into an ever-more irritating feature of my domestic environment.

There are a surprising number of definitions for ‘drone’. As a noun, ‘drone’ is defined as “a stingless male bee in a colony of social bees (especially honeybees) whose sole function is to mate with the queen.” It is also “an unchanging intonation, a monotone.”

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Then it can be someone who takes more time than necessary, someone who lags behind.” Don’t overlook the fact that it also means “a person who does no work, who lingers aimlessly in or about a place, a layabout.” More recently, it is used to identify “an aircraft without a pilot that is operated by remote control.”

The Falkirk Herald's gardening guru Sandy SimpsonThe Falkirk Herald's gardening guru Sandy Simpson
The Falkirk Herald's gardening guru Sandy Simpson

As if these were not enough definitions, ‘drone’ is “a pipe of the bagpipe that is tuned to produce a single continuous tone.” These are only the definitions of ‘drone’ as a noun. ‘Drone’ is also a verb, in which capacity it is defined as meaning “to make a monotonous low dull sound” or “to talk in a monotonous voice.”

There are obvious applications of ‘drone’ to a garden. Probably the most obvious is the stingless male bee in a colony of social bees whose sole function is to mate with the queen, a duty which he and his colleagues pursue with commendable dedication, aided and abetted by the queen bees, which are anything but monogamous! (The sex life of the bee is not suitable for family viewing beyond vague references to ‘the birds and the bees’, believe me.)

But drone bees are unlikely to be found in my garden at this time of year, for they are expelled from the hive at the onset of cold weather to be replaced by new drones come the spring. Since drone bees depend on access to the hive’s honey stores for their continued existence, they don’t survive long after their expulsion, being unable to cope after being made homeless.

So no, I was not being plagued by drone bees.

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Then the drone which had entered my life could have been a self-deprecatory term; I might have been referring to myself, ashamed of my ability to linger aimlessly in or about a place. But the arrival of autumn had discouraged lingering in my garden, the pleasure of strolling around savouring a gin and tonic being much reduced when the warm sunshine of a summer evening has been supplanted by the damp chill of a November afternoon.

So no, I was not being self-deprecatory. And no, nor was I subject to intrusive overflying by pilotless aircraft and unhappy about this development. None of my neighbours play the pipes, so I was not being assailed by a single continuous tone emanating from a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag.

But I was being upset by a single continuous tone, a drone brought about by the need for remedial works to the arch of a bridge which allows the Polmont Burn to pass under the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway line behind our house.

We had been alerted to this by Network Rail. But … and it’s a very big but … after three large diesel generators had been installed to power pumps to divert the water into pipes, bypass the bridge and re-enter its course 50 metres further east, leaving the bed of the burn dry, a reassessment of the extent of the necessary work delayed its start.

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These generators, which were delivered on September 3, had been droning on 24/7 for ten weeks. They had droned on incessantly whether or not men were working on the site.

We had become obsessed with the continuous noise. Then a few days ago, after the remedial works finally got under way, we realised that the droning had stopped, ceased, was no more. Alleluia! After ten weeks of noise, it’s hard to believe how welcome the sound of silence is!

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