The gardening lobby are a dismissive lot. According to them everything else is as exciting as watching paint dry. Bog Sage, these are the people that watch grass grow!
A garden should consist of a flat lawn and that’s it. Nice and simple, nothing fancy but the world is full of would-be Percy Thrower’s. Who really wants the hassle of extra work and of doing it outdoors? Mowing, sowing, cutting, potting, digging, raking- boring. All those -ings are nothing more than a recipe for sleeping. Endlessly working, always renovating, this gardening charade is nothing more than being an eternal horticultural barber. Just give it a Kojak and be done with.
Tried to avoid a gardener neighbour but ran into her in the road.(wish I’d brought me car. I would have happily run into her). She was hyper-actively enthusing about her next project. She was going to plant bulbs in her garden! I’m not the brightest lamp on the circuit but did I catch her right, bulbs? Planting bulbs? In the garden? Planting bulbs in the garden? I suppose that’s one way of lighting up the garden. They’re definitely away with the fairies, those gardeners- Jack and the Lightstalk!
Another thing I can’t get my head around is why anyone would want to wade through dirt while shovelling away in those acres of litter trays? Mucky boots, dirty fingernails and the smell of stinky soil that loiters on your clothes is not my idea of heaven. Neither is being surrounded by creepy-crawlies and feathered flying creatures. Slimy slugs sliding through your hands and bird droppings raining from above. Much rather be in a mosh pit any day of the week.
Yet the devoted gardener is religiously obsessed with their Eden. Their dystopian world is a Frankenstein monster out of control. An ever-expanding cultivated compost heap. Where they see beauty I see a dog’s dinner of a land. A plant’s a plant, a flower’s a flower. They all look the same. You’ve seen one…As do trees. Couldn’t tell you one tree from the other.
Met the gardening woman again and she told me she was going to cut down the big tree in her garden. A light bulb appeared in my head. My modest bucket list includes cutting down a big tree. The one I really want to topple belongs to a friend’s in Denmark but this one closer to home will do. I volunteered to do the duty to the damsel in distress.
She took me to her garden of paradise and I saw for the first time- the great beast. It was one of those behemoths you encounter in the forest. It was fifty stories high if it was a floor! A towering building of bark and branches. I told the big fella he was about to meet his maker.
The woman offered me her power saw but I declined because that’s cheating. I wood use an axe to give the Arboreal monster a fighting chance. I swung the axe and pulverised the ogre with a succession of powerful blows. After seriously denting one part of its circumference I began work on the other side hoping to meet in the middle and fluke it like the engineers of the Channel tunnel did.
The day got darker but after tears, blood, sweat, toil and lots of cola the big tree came tumbling down. Satisfied? Not yet. The next task was to hollow out the stump using chiselling tools. The tree soon became a type of bucket chair. I sat on it and and slept like a log.
Boadicea's Chariot 
I fear for your safety after CO reads this.
Cushions plumped – Check!
Shoes kicked off and feet on table – Check!
Crisps opened – Check!
Beer chilling nicely – Check!
Right, I’m ready for the fray and I don’t think this is going to end well for you when Christina reads it.
Bring it on.
OZ
He he! Good evening, Christopher and draw up an armchair. I’m going to enjoy this.
OZ
Seconds out….ding! 😱
I’m not much of one for blood sports or undue violence so I’ll let this alone. I do, however, offer chariot cleaning services. Guaranteed to remove all blood stains!
Hi chaps, off to dust down the suit of armour. You’ll hear me clanging back in the morning.
I hear CO is mustering her Western forces in the community garden and planning an invasion up the Clyde. It won’t be pretty.
It is somewhat unfortunate, amusing and ironic that the Brugmansia ‘art piece’ at the rear is blowing off to the Colocasia.
To the likes of you, the hallucinogenic Angel’s Trumpet is blethering into the Elephants’s Ear!
Just like this contribution.
So you know what you can do with your Cordyline.
So unfortunate when you pick quite such a picture in pig ignorance.
Hmmm. Clever – those not-too-globe-like GM-artichokes (bottom centre) – bringing a touch of exotic allotment to an otherwise too-perfect ensemble of ornamental plants.
Only kidding: someone’s created a Garden of Paradise for themselves in just a few square metres. Don’t forget the nightly slug patrol however…
Clang, clang, clang. Give us a hand with getting this helmet off, willya? Thanks. Bloody sweating in here.
Disappointed, MrsO, especially as we were part of the Chariot’s dream team! We wrote a poem together where I bowed to your superior knowledge!! Now I find out you don’t even know your plants!!!!!!!!!!
That’s not an Angel’s Trumpet, that’s Bellsprout. Don’t you follow, follow contemporary culture? You missed out on catching your first Pokemon.
Pokewot?
Gerra a life….😷
It is all very well just having a flat lawn, but what if the mower will not start? That can be a bit of a nuisance!
If I find a pokewhatsit in my veg patch I will beat it to death with my hoe!
Contemporary culture my arse.
Moronic crap for those snowflakes too afraid of the real world. With any luck a few will walk under buses before they have had time to breed. Pure darwinism, no wonder the bloody ragheads destroy us so easily.
I do not own a mobile phone, quite deliberately. I do not wish to be disturbed by idiots, wankers and tossers.
Civilised people leave messages on an answerphone and are called back.
Now then, Christina, texting is great for those with sociopathic tendencies, like Backside. Write what you like, ignore any wasters. 😷
Interlude-
“…what if the mower will not start? ”
Blu-rays! You don’t half love your creature comforts, FEEG. What’s wrong with a manual mower and manual hedge cutters? Super clear HD vision and electric mowers! Honestly, your generation don’t know they’re born.
JW, y’mean scythe and sickle, eh? Think stately home, lawns big enough for cricket – those were the days.😳
Too right, J-Man. A lawn is for a kick about or spin bowling. Well played, Yasir Messi.
And now back to Game Of Thorns.
DADADADADADADAAADAADAAA DADADA
That is an unusual ability for defeating a Pokemon, MrsO. Having scoured the Poke database the only defence is to seed your garden with Pee-the-Beds. This acidic flowering should turn the place into a wasteland.(or a flood)
The tautology Police will also be paying you a visit for your second last sentence.
Well JW, have you ever cut through the cable of an electric mower. Our lawn is too big for a battery powered mower and, while I might have considered mowing manually when I was a fit young blade, I am now a grumpy old git!
Hi again FEEG,
My old man used to use the manual mower/cutters. It wasn’t half hard work until one day he upgraded to the electric Fly-mo. It did take him a bit of getting used to and, many’s the time he almost cut the wire!
Was talking to an old friend that had a Phillips V2000 VCR. I remember watching the Cronenberg thriller, Shivers, on his device. I’d forgotten that the video tape played on both sides! This was a bit of an innovation for its day. You did say it was the best of the bunch.
My father’s idea of mowing lawns will take some beating. Two acres of it for starters.
He positioned all children with wet sacks at the perimeters and set fire to it once a season! Worked for several years until he nearly burnt down the neighbouring wooden property, ouch. The fire brigade were not amused.
After that we had goats eating it.
Lawn mower? What’s a lawn mower?