From first of December The Thirsty Flowers can be purchased in new edition with a new cover. Controversially, I’ve re-jigged a few verses, including the best stanza I ever wrote. The ‘moon landing’ stanza, as I call it, now reads:

‘He’s OK!’ Rose cried, as they watched the dust settle.
Then Sam tried to walk and fell flat on his petals.
But still he kept trying, with such strength of mind
that he took a small step – a giant leap for plant-kind.

Thirsty Flowers trainspotters, of which there are three, will notice that ‘but fell flat on his petals’ (2006) has become ‘and fell flat on his petals’ (2013). This change took months of hard work and involved most of the office at Hardie Grant Egmont. But eventually we got the right result — and when kids’ reading futures are at stake, that’s the important thing.

The other changes I made were to what my wife Tamsin called ‘cheat rhymes’, where ‘can’ was formerly paired with ‘McCann’. She will now hopefully be happy. And yes, for those wondering, the sprinkler system on page 31 survived, despite now being outlawed in four States.

The full text of the new edition is contained below. The wonderful Julie Knoblock is the illustrator.

The Thirsty Flowers (2013 version)

At the back of a yard, not yours and not ours,
lived a bed-full of raggedy, half-dying flowers.
For it had been more than three months and a quarter
Since Mad Jack McCann had bothered to water.

With hair in his nose and not much of a chin,
Why do you reckon he’d watered back then?
Well, it wasn’t to keep his garden alive,
But to hose off dead leaves from his concreted drive.

Now that might not have been so cruel or so painful
if the season was one that was good for some rainfall,
but this was the height of a terrible drought
as those raggedy flowers were now finding out.

One night towards dusk, the flowers arranged a
special report from Doctor Hydrangea.
For he knew enough of plant health and nutrition
to update the group on its general condition.

The doctor began, ‘Let’s start off with Daisy.
Right now I’m afraid her prognosis is hazy
Unless we can get her a drink before Sunday,
I think it unlikely she’ll live to see Monday.’

Then Doctor Hydrangea took a deep breath
And said, ‘Rose and Lily also face death,
and Sunflower Sam and Violet and Iris –
though Iris’ black spots might just be a virus.’

‘And as for myself, I’m not in great fettle,
though I’m trying to keep a stiff upper petal,
Yes things are quite grim, the whole bed is dying,
except maybe Cactus, who copes with a frying.’

At the end of the doctor’s sad little talk,
they saw Jack McCann come out for his walk.
The flowers all screamed, ‘Please give us a drink!
Our stems are so parched, we’re right on the brink!’

But Jack McCann heard not a word of this riot
(for a sick flower’s voice is particularly quiet).
He just wandered around, with a snarl and a leer
slurping away from a can of cold beer.

And guess what he did as he went in for dinner,
this Mad Jack McCann, this gardening sinner?
With a snarl and a growl, he lifted his can
and emptied the beer over Sunflower Sam.

The beer was disgusting, all bitter and sour,
and sunflowers are not a beer-swilling flower,
so Sam started shaking, with anger, with fury,
‘Mad Jack, you boofhead! I smell like a brewery!’

He was not an old flower, this Sunflower Sam,
more sunflower boy than sunflower man,
but as the sun set in those late evening hours
he dreamt up a plan to rescue the flowers.

He said, ‘My poor friends, in peril together,
caught as we are in this wretched hot weather,
it’s time to set forth, and seek out some water,
rather than stay here like bulbs to the slaughter.

‘We’ll leave here this night, if we have any sense,
for trickles of water flow under the fence.
The clues are right there, how could we have missed them?
The people next door have a watering system!’

With that, Rose and Lily let out a great cheer,
‘Hooray for our sunflower, stinking of beer!
Now is the time for some positive thinking –
the sooner we leave, the sooner we’re drinking!’

‘Hold onto your stems!’ cried Doctor Hydrangea.
‘Have none of you any conception of danger?
And Sunflower Sam must be drunk on those dregs
if he thinks we can leave here without any legs.’

The doctor continued, ‘Come stop all this talk,
the fact is that none of us know how to walk.
You’ve obviously all taken leave of your senses
If you think we can suddenly start climbing fences.’

But Sunflower Sam said, ‘I don’t give two hoots!
Who says a flower can’t walk on its roots?
And though I can’t name it as one of my talents,
I’m sure that it’s simply a question of balance.

‘We’ll walk, Doc! We will! Just see if we don’t,
I honestly don’t think there’s one here that won’t.
And what’s there to lose? Let’s give it a try!
It sure beats the pants off just waiting to die.’

In chorus the flowers began a great hooting
to support the brave sunflower’s plan for uprooting
And Sunflower Sam? Well he started to jiggle,
to stretch and to struggle, to strain and to wriggle.

And just when it seemed he was ready to stop,
he sprang from the ground with a sort of a POP!
With his roots in the air and his face in the dirt,
it’s a wonder that Sunflower Sam wasn’t hurt.

‘He’s OK!’ Rose cried, as they watched the dust settle.
Then Sam tried to walk and fell flat on his petals.
But still he kept trying, with such strength of mind
that he took a small step – a giant leap for plant-kind

‘You’re walking! You’re walking!’ squealed poor, thirsty Daisy,
who then started bobbing and bouncing like crazy.
The others joined in, and before long they found
that they too could pop themselves out of the ground.

And so, in the beautiful light of the dawn,
Sam held a walking class out on the lawn.
He said, ‘Stand up tall, and keep off your shoots,
And balance your weight on the balls of your roots!’

Poor Rose had a limp and Lily a stagger,
while Dr Hydrangea walked with a swagger.
At first Violet found that her roots kept on flopping,
until she discovered that she preferred hopping

Daisy was brilliant – a sort of a prancer,
who secretly thought that she could be a dancer.
And Sunflower Sam was just ever so steady,
which basically meant that the whole class was ready.

But just as they went to set out on their hike,
They realised that Cactus had not moved a spike.
‘Get a move on, old Cactus!’ cried Sunflower Sam,
‘We’re leaving the garden of Mad Jack McCann.’

‘I’m staying put,’ Cactus said from the bed,
With a definite shake of his prickly green head.
‘Dying of thirst is not one of my fears.
A cactus can live without water for years.

‘To be honest I think that you’re all rather dense
if you think you can haul yourselves over that fence
And I won’t be lonely, if just for the fact I
have always preferred the company of cacti.’

Said Sunflower Sam, ‘I think that’s baloney!
There will come a time when you start to feel lonely.
And though you’re a grump who has no sense of fun,
I want you to know you’re still welcome to come.’

With that he jumped up and set off for the fence.
It was time for the journey next door to commence
With Sam in the lead and the good Doctor trailing,
they looked for a hole, or a loose piece of paling.

They searched high and low for more than an hour
But the fence had no gaps that were fit for a flower.
‘We’re goners,’ said Daisy, ‘we won’t last till noon,
unless a small miracle happens quite soon.’

And then from the top of the fence came a noise,
the soft, gentle sound of a young creeper’s voice.
‘My name is Jasmine, this fence top is mine.
Would it help you folks out if I dropped you a vine?

‘I don’t like the look of that Jack McCann man,
and his lack of regard for the watering can.
So come, hold on tight and I’ll whisk you away
to a garden that’s watered at least once a day.’

You’ve probably never seen flowers so happy,
in fact, most of their eyes were decidedly sappy.
As the vines tumbled over, they took a firm grip,
and prepared for their lifesaving, creeper-vine trip.

When Jasmine got swinging, the flowers swung too,
as you might have seen chimpanzees do at the zoo.
‘Yippee!’ shouted Sunflower Sam to the rest,
‘of all forms of transport, this must be the best!’

And then came the swingiest swing of them all.
They were thrown upside down – Rose thought she would fall,
Yet the plants kept on holding for all they were worth …
… and touched down in the loveliest garden on Earth.

The colour! The compost! The rich flower smells!
Daffodils, daisies and dainty bluebells,
and roses and orchids and so many more,
including a native called Kangaroo Paw.

As for the soil, well you couldn’t find better –
the travelling flowers had never seen wetter.
It’s not that the people next door wasted water,
It’s just that they watered as much as they oughta.

There were bushes and trees and the odd garden gnome,
and creepers that covered an old mud-brick home.
The whole garden welcomed them on their arrival
with famous old hymns about flower survival.

Sunflower Sam said, ‘We must all be dreaming,’
when all of a sudden the songs turned to screaming.
For up roared a huge ugly dog they called Pete,
who wrongly believed he had found some fresh meat.

Pete’s tongue on its own was as big as a flower,
He smelt bad as well, in need of a shower.
‘We’ve had it!’ shrieked Daisy, as Pete poised to strike,
‘we’re about to find out what a dog’s stomach’s like!’

And then at that moment of awful suspense,
there came a great yell from the top of the fence.
And when they looked up, well whom should they find?
None other than Cactus, who’d been left behind.

He flew through the air like a flying green pickle,
‘Back of now doggie, these prickles don’t tickle!’
With shouts of encouragement coming from Rose,
Cactus crash-landed on Pete the dog’s nose.

Pete let out a whine and a bit of a yelp
and then sprinted back to the house for some help.
He now feared the flowers and thought them quite mean,
especially the spiky, green flying machine.

Meanwhile, old Cactus just dusted his face
as the rest picked him up in a happy embrace,
and though his sharp prickles stuck through them like knives,
they kept hugging Cactus for saving their lives.

‘Thank you, dear Cactus!’ cried Dr Hydrangea,
‘How did you know we were all in grave danger?’
But Cactus just shrugged, he did not make a sound,
and started to dig himself into the ground.

The rest of the group? Well, they all found their spots
Some went for flowerbeds, others for pots
But they all made a home by the time of moonrise
when the sprinklers came on in their new paradise.

And now once a year on a cool summer night
Jack McCann’s flowers remember their flight.
They meet near the place their adventure began
and try for a glimpse of ol’ Mad Jack McCann.

He still takes his walks, and he still wears a leer,
and on most of these walks he still carries a beer.
But now when he throws it, no flowers are hurt,
for in Jack McCann’s garden there’s nothing but dirt.