The joy of gardening
I assume that this is a rural phenomenon but the moment Spring arrives; when you step out of the door to find the air suddenly filled with the drone of lawnmowers and the buzz of Strimmers, you can basically forget about the phone ringing for the next four weeks.
For the next month the plumb centre will be packed with redundant plumbers whiling away their free time with tales of dare-doing and almost-doing. Meanwhile, B&Q will have become a heaving mass of humanity, frittering away their fortunes on compost and bedding plants.
I imagine that in London, where ‘gardening’ consists of buying a couple of busy-lizzies and trying to squeeze them into a window box, the plumbers will still be racing around town like Schumacher on amphetamines, but out here in the sticks it’s as quiet as a quiet day… only quieter.
The act of murdering some plants because they are the wrong plants growing in the wrong place, ripping up others because they are the right plants but growing in the wrong place, planting the right plants in the right place then ripping them out again three months later because you’ve forgotten that they are the right plants in the right place and now think they are the wrong plants in the wrong place, is called ‘Gardening’. I prefer to call it ‘an utter bloody waste of time.’, however, judging by afternoon TV schedules and the hive of activity in the local gardening centre, I would appear to be in the minority.
No matter how hard you try to turn your back on gardening it takes just one look down the road, past the serried ranks of pristine lawns and luxuriant flower beds, for the phrase ‘If you can’t beat them, join them‘ to bludgeon its way into your head.
I once tried to convince my wife that the phrase ‘If you can’t beat them, just bloody well ignore them‘, would work just as well but it was all to no avail and so, in order to keep up appearances, I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the realm of the garden.
In all fairness, when we first moved here our garden was in need of a little attention. The previous owners had, for some perverse reason, striven to create a back garden with a ‘gravel-pit cum building site’ theme. Forget your pitch-fork and secateurs what was required here was a bulldozer and Semtex. Not content with the Chesil-beach look they then went on to dig three ponds, cunningly locating them in such a way as to ensnare the unwary.
Actually, ‘Pond’ doesn’t accurately describe these watery holes in the ground. The word ‘pond’ hints at crystal clear water filled with koi carp, shy roach, bashful tench and the occasional extravert perch. These were gloomy wastes, home to green floaty stuff and not much else. At least that’s what I thought before I drained them.
In the end they turned out to be home to an inordinate amount of frogs and Newts. I was a little worried at the time, as the ‘Great Crested Newt’ is a protected species. However, these things looked neither great, nor crested. In fact they looked like exactly what they were… evicted.
Which reminds me! Where does the phrase ‘pissed as a newt‘ come from? I mean, you don’t look at a Newt and immediately think “Wow! There’s a wild party animal. Look at that amphibian go!”
Granted, I could have been observing them the morning after the night before. Perhaps if I’d ventured down to the garden in the wee small hours I’d have discovered a writhing mass of Newts, knocking back alcopops and hosting wild tequila parties. Maybe the turpid, befuddled, creatures I collected that afternoon were just displaying the inevitable consequences of a night of largess? Mind you, suddenly finding themselves ripped from their watery home and dropped into a tupperware bowl probably wasn’t helping their mood at all.
Just in case they were ‘Great’ or ‘Crested’, and just in case there was a man from the ministry lurking in the vicinity, I took my newt collection around to my neighbour, who - being a kindly soul - offered them board and lodgings in his own pond. It was a much better pond with a much better rock to reside under and to make sure they were entirely happy I left them a couple of bottles of Bacardi Breezer, just to tide them through the weekend.
Having disposed of the ponds and most of the gravel the only other major issue in the garden was the Willow tree. It was a lovely tree but at over 40ft high it was just blocking out too much light, so I decided to pollard it.
I’ll admit that the word ‘pollard’ and the act of ‘pollarding’ is hardly commonplace but I was astonished that no one seemed to have the foggiest notion what I was talking about. Even my neighbour, who shows all the signs of being a keen gardener, didn’t have a clue what I was about.
“You want to Pollack your willow tree?” Was his bemused reply when I explained why I wanted to borrow his chainsaw.
I was tempted to explain that ‘Pollarding’ means cutting a tree back to it’s main trunk so that it sprouts loads of little branches, which, belonging to a willow tree, will then arch gracefully to the ground and create a vision of loveliness. Meanwhile, ‘pollacking’, if it means anything at all, means beating up a tree with a member of the cod family. Whilst this will no doubt have a pronounced affect on the Pollack, it’s unlikely to have any effect on the willow tree - other than maybe making it smell of fish for a few weeks.
However, my time was limited so I just said “Yup, I’m going to give that thar willow a good old fashioned pollacking.” and left it at that.
It took most of the day to remove all the main branches but by early evening my tree had been reduced to a 20ft high trunk, with a little V-sign at the top where the two main branches had been.
“You’ve killed it!” Was my wife’s immediate comment. My neighbour was a little bit more diplomatic, “Are you sure you haven’t killed it?” was his remark. In fact for months afterwards the entire village seemed to regard me as a savage murderer of defenceless trees.
“But I’ve only Pollarded it!” I kept trying to explain to people.
“What you do with fish in the privacy of your own home is no business of mine, but you’ve killed that lovely tree, so you ‘ave.” Was a not uncommon retort.
As winter went by the defiant V-sign, atop the bare, denuded trunk, showed absolutely no sign of life and I must admit that I was starting to get a bit worried myself. Not only was I being accused of deciduous destruction but I now had a 20ft high ‘fuck-off‘ sign at the bottom of my garden - not the greatest aid to neighbourly relations. Then, with the first sign of Spring, a few branches began to sprout from the top and before long the accusations of murder most foul had ceased. By Summer the branches were sweeping the ground and the tree looked absolutely stunning.
That was all last year and that was all enjoyable; real gardening, manly gardening; all hard hats and chainsaws, wellies full of mud and pockets full of newts. This year it’s all been namby-pamby girlie stuff; picking flowers to plant, mowing lawns and weeding.
I fear that my wife has caught a bad case of ‘Gardening’ and seems hell bent on spending what little money we have on plants. This is despite the acknowledged fact that until they develop a plant which rises from the ground sporting a huge “Bought this Spring in B&Q” sticker, they are almost certain to get ‘weeded’ into oblivion before the Summer’s out.
Personally I’d rather miss out the middleman and just feed the compost heap with five pound notes.
