For this text:
> Hyacinths on (what I fondly call) my rockery.
Everyone calls Hyacinths as Hyacinths , because this is the original name of the flower called Hyacinths , so why the author say: "what I fondly call"?
The context is :
>They tap our bedroom window on stormy nights. Hyacinths on (what I fondly call) my rockery. Boy-blue and girl-pink.
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Excerpted from David Mitchell's novel "The Gardener" partly(maybe you needn't read these words):
>Satin white, Persian purple, oil-paint yellow. When I planted these birches they were broomstick-height, and now look at them. They tap our bedroom window on stormy nights. Hyacinths on (what I fondly call) my rockery. Boy-blue and girl-pink. Through the kitchen double-doors I watch you eating supper – carrot and coriander soup – and leafing through Country Living Magazine, dreaming of houses uncluttered by reality, by half a lifetime of memories, perhaps.
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
No. The "what I fondly call" is meant to apply to the next thing, the 'rockery', not to the previous thing--hyacinths. (the clue to that is that the phrase follows AFTER the 'on' = [that are growing on] and not before it. .... 'What I fondly call' is a subtle way of saying that what his rockery is less than a real or proper rockery. It doesn't measure up, it is not equal in quality to, what a 'real' rockery is. The writer's rockery is 'inferior, insufficient' in his own mind; it 'falls short' of a true rockery. If it helps, substitute 'term' or 'name' or 'label' for the verb 'call' the way he uses it. That might help too.