COMSUBBBS
Posts: 2974
Location: Liverpool, England | Subject: An English Country Garden
It's that time of year when promises sown during the wild month of March are being met. It wasn't until late in life that I found the necessary space to explore the pleasure of gardening, and for many years I pursued my floral fancy ardently, until that is I discovered the world of computers, which supplanted my older love.
I began to neglect my garden, offering only a perfunctory glance in its direction and simply going through the motions of a relationship.
My garden, which had once dazzled me with its gorgeous finery, grew sullen and withdrew into itself, as if donning widow's weeds. Just as it appeared that my love of the soil would be buried beneath an avalanche of technology based flirtations my affair with the web began to cool somewhat and so I now find that my old affections have green shoots once more.
I don't know where my desire to grow plants came from because as a child the only gardening I ever saw my father undertake was to cut the rampant privot hedge that surrounded our house. The air would be moist with the scent of clipped leaves mingled with the sweet smelling fluorescence of yellowy white privet flowers. To this day I love the heady honey perfume of the humble privot.
My grandfather lived in Hillside Road, which was almost the last road before Liverpool gave way to Prescot, an ancient market town. There was a cherry tree in the back garden, which every year produced two green cherries that clung to a lower branch like the testicles of a camouflaged and singularly un-endowed giant. My father and his father in law used to stare up at the pitiful bounty and mutter about fertilizer, but that was as far as their horticultural impulse went, apart from the year my father clambered up the tree to pluck the fruit from the loins of the giant, only to find them bitter beyond belief.
My grandfather's neighbour, a bus driver by the name of Sullivan was much more enterprising because he had what appeared to be a veritable plantation devoted to rhubarb production. However, in the early fifties sugar was still rationed, and so whenever Mr Sullivan handed my grandmother an armful of the pink stems my lips would pucker as the sour juice of anticipation flooded in to shrivel my palate. Mr Sullivan had a daughter called Angela, whom I admired from afar and whose sweet features more than made up for the mouth-puckering rhubarb. That was my last contact with domestic food production for many years.
In any case my father was so tired from his six-day workweek, that any notion of gardening was absurd. It was as much as he could do to watch a Sunday morning children’s show of “Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men” that so fascinated my baby sister Janet. While my father was busy reading the Sunday newspaper my sister was absorbing much more than images of flowerpots and weeds. As a teenager I would often find myself slumped in front of the television watching the antics of Bill and Ben. At the end of every programme the lady narrator would ask which flowerpot had performed whatever mischievous act the show had displayed that day. I invariably guessed wrongly, while my four-year-old sibling would always get it right. One day, frustrated by my inability to give the right answer I bemusedly asked her how she always knew. Looking at me with something akin to pity in her eyes she replied, "It's easy...one day it's Bill and the next day it's Ben."
After I married within a couple of years we had our own garden starting to bloom. I would like to say that I personally transformed it into a demi-Eden single handedly but that would be very far from the truth. To be honest, my basic gardening skills were as nothing compared to my wife’s green fingers and it was her that designed and invariably maintained its glory during my long absences at sea.
Just as well that she assumed control of the garden, as my earlier efforts had been pretty unproductive and dismal. When we first moved in she expressed dismay that the back garden (backyard) was such a marked difference from that of her mothers home, which had always won local best prize awards for its floral displays. I felt I had to make some sort of effort to recreate her paradise but only succeeded in making her giggle at some of my antics. Not that she was disparaging but it is hard not to laugh when you find someone digging up daffodil bulbs planted in an old ammunition box, in order to see if they were they were the right way up! I ended up with a couple of beds that were home to a few sooty roses but by then I had reached the limits of my expertise.
However, a couple of years later someone tried to reap a rather unusual harvest. One day when I came home I found the house empty as my wife was attending a dental appointment. Just as I was in the kitchen putting on the kettle I was startled when I saw a man walking around the back garden close to the washing line. Shocked and angry, I asked him what the hell he was doing, but I calmed down when he told me he was the refuse collector man and that he'd been looking for the refuse bin. I never thought anything about it and several months later found myself drinking in the same pub as the intrusive bin man who was quite an accomplished darts player. It wasn't until I read in the local paper that he'd been convicted of stealing over three hundred items of women's underwear from washing lines that I realised why he'd been in the backyard. Whatever floats your boat I guess?
My Sadim touch, that's Midas backwards, eventually withered on the vine and with that my wife eventually took pity on me and took over the management of the large rear garden and a medium sized front garden. My role was reduced to that of doing all the heavy-duty donkeywork like building rockeries and a pond, planting an apple and a cherry tree, clearing of leaves and other such menial chores.
That was thirty-five years ago, when I had assumed that my wife would want the usual suburban layout, that is, a lawn and borders, but she expressed a wish for flowers and nothing else. So it is that I am typing here with my laptop, and sitting in a comfy chair because my back is aching from a heavy session of weeding. Trust me to resurrect such a demanding passion at my age! I think I will do some pruning, editing, and call the gardening off for the day. The web has its share of weeds but none quite like the people who pass by and ask of my painstakingly worked out drift planting, admittedly at the behest of my better half, "Do you just scatter your seeds at random?"
I just think, 'Those were the days my friend...'
Pedro
|
COMSUBBBS
Posts: 6180
Location: Summerville, SC | Subject: RE: An English Country Garden
A good read, Mate.
Do you just scatter your seeds at random?"
From the looks of my garden one would think so. My "Master Gardener" is my 6 year old Grandson, Shane. He calls the garden his "farm" and is right proud of what he has planted. We've been doing his "farm" since he was 3.
The farm measures about 3 1/2m X 4m. I get to do all the soil prep and laying out the rows as directed by the "Master Gardner". He places the seeds and covers them up. I get to assist with the watering and am incharge of weed pulling but "Master" Shane is incharge of harvest...as long as there aren't any bugs about. If a beetle(not the singing type) is seen I am directed to commence spraying to rid the plants of them. If I'm not around when Shane inspects his farm, he will collect the found bettles, caterpillars, etc. in a jar to show me.
This past season we had tomatoes, beans, squash and corn. Surprisingly, we did have a bit of "fruit" to show. Plans for next season are forming already. He knows now, after trial & error, that we plant too much in our little space. So, it's either make a bigger "farm" or reduce the number of crops. The "Master Gardner" is mulling this over now.   |
An English Country Garden
