25 Jan 2016
In the unlikely event that a documentary maker was to find me fascinating enough to pop round and film my life, they would be sorely disappointed. I am fascinating, natch, but vast swathes of my time are spent behind a keyboard, typing. It would, effectively, be a film of me sitting down; not quite the stuff of Oscar nominations.
My sedentary work is, however, the reason I garden. The contrast is exhilarating: all that getting up early, pulling on wellies and getting my hands mucky. It’s also therapeutic and calming, and there’s something very satisfying about manual work: you see the results immediately.
So, this morning I went outside, to my newly landscaped London postage-stamp of a garden, to begin this year’s adventure. Step one was to come back in the house, take my wellies off, and drive to a garden centre to buy whopping great bags of topsoil to fill in a super-large flower bed. BF and I sweated and grunted the impressively heavy bags into the car, then into the house, then out to the flower bed. My lower back complained bitterly, but you can’t have the fun of gardening without a little toil. So goes the received wisdom.
Before filling commenced, I discovered my (deeply annoying) builder had managed to fill the flower bed with compacted rubble, which needed digging out before soil could go in. Cue more sweat-and-grunt, not to mention very sore arms, but it did look good. I also had just enough soil left to plant two fruit trees into tubs that my (utterly hapless) builder had accidentally dug up. Phew.
My (apparently cross-eyed) builder also built a new chicken set-up, whose wonky sides, wobbling roof and stubborn door can only be described via euphemism. Today’s is ‘charming’. My shoulders complained bitterly as I cleaned and reorganised, shovelling rotting chicken poop and generally being ‘back in touch with nature’. Oh, those euphemisms! However, as my cheerful chooks scooted about, it did cross my mind that the over-indulged fluff-balls might now do their job re egg production.
Next up was a new water feature, involving copious swearing from BF, then planting spring bulbs, which sounds lovely but ruined my manicure. After rearranging a series of very heavy plant pots (ouch) I cleaned my secateurs, which really is as thrilling as it sounds. Then, a number of big climbers went in the ground in the hope they’ll scurry up the back trellis and hide the dead fridge in the yard of the Chinese takeaway behind. It’s hard to feel bucolic when you’re staring out over a crumbling Indesit.
An inordinate amount of sweeping followed, since my (inexplicably bad) builder hadn’t bothered to deal with any of the sand used to lay paving slabs. More swearing, this time at my dogs, who, on discovering the virgin flower bed, began a digging frenzy worthy of the Great Escape.
By the end of it all we were knackered, muddy and aching. So much for a restful tinkering with Mother Nature. I look like Albert Steptoe and BF smells like Worzel Gummidge.
As I sit by my new water-feature with a steaming cup of tea, I can’t help but wonder if I’m far more Margot than Barbara. The idea of The Good Life is lovely, but the reality is too much mud and pain.
