Coming Soon To My Life.....The Return Of Gardening

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I had a conversation with the wife yesterday. It went something along these lines.

"Once we move in I'll need to do something about the internet. I can get something temporarily arranged through the mobile but we really have to get BT as soon as possible."

The wife's response? "You need to get that hedge done".

(But with more fruitier language)

Thus the return of gardening in my life is announced....or demanded....anyway it's coming back.

Now let's be clear. If gardening includes not letting things look like a jungle then yes I'm a gardener. I've cut the grass. I've done weeding. But for me gardening is planting things and watching them grow. Planning as to what's the best plant to put on a north facing garden etc, etc (and full disclosure I've no idea and to be honest care less).

Wife though is of course whilst having my same lack of knowledge is more enthusiastic about doing something. With friends she has already done some weeding ( before you ask I'm curtailed by shift work, opportunity and the weather from literally mucking in so far. Can't say I'm sorry though) and already she's planning on "the look".

I see Sunday morning visits to [insert garden centre here] . The most suburban activity. The most dull. The most that communicates to the world that you've nothing better to do.

Personally tidying aside I see the biggest problem being the large aforesaid hedge in the front garden. Wife doesn't like it. For the moment I'm a fan if only because it provides privacy. But that isn't the immediate problem for me. The problem is that it needs cutting and I've never used a hedge trimmer before.

Now to be fair to me I've never needed to use one. But when you approach a task that you've never done before you're liable to make mistakes before you get the hang of it and since this is in the front garden your mistakes will be a free to air comedy for the neighbours. Those neighbours you're trying to make a good impression to (in the sense of saying "we're not odd").

Time to pause again. I do get allotment gardening/people growing vegetables in their garden. I get the point. You're actually creating something. There's a purpose. But the front/back gardens of the new house are too small for that purpose. We're talking here about gardening as decoration and nothing else.

And for what? As I've said I'm all for tidying but nothing else. What actually is the benefit of gardening as decoration? What is there to enjoy? You're not going to spend hours on end looking at your garden. As I'm writing this it's 6:48am in the morning. The sun's shining and the sky is blue but I know that assuming there was no tidying up to do I would not be in the garden just relaxing. I don't like really hot weather. I could watch TV. I could go on the internet. I could read. I could go out to watch some [insert sport here], I could even just have a cooler less insect prone nap inside. In other words for me there are just better things to do.

If you like gardening then fine. We all have our hobbies I get that. But for this horse gardening is not the right course.

Until the next time.