It’s the start of spring according to the weatherman but my calendar says there are still a few weeks left of winter to go. Either way, the sun is out and the birds are singing and the sap is rising. The buds on the hydrangea are thinking about bursting open and the grass is starting to look dishevelled. This can mean only one thing – it’s time to tidy the garden for the first time this year.
Now I don’t know about you but gardens are things that I like to visit, to sit in and relax in. I even like to wander around them on a warm sunny day when the white clouds amble lazily across the sky. I like to look at the flowers and wonder at the intricate and seemingly endless complexity that evolution has created (of course Fibonacci sequences spring to mind). But when it comes to gardening itself, I can’t stand it. I don’t know what it is, not the hard work although this can require some motivation to get started, but perhaps it’s the damp and the dirt and the sticky gloopy mud. I hate the palaver, the changing into your old clothes, putting on cold wellies, fighting your way through the gossamer webs in the shed and the awful smell that gardening gloves leave on your hands for weeks to come.
I can watch the celebrity gardeners with interest mind you. I can admire their skills and wonder at what they are able to achieve but when I see Monty Don or Carol Klein or Alys Fowler (I don’t even want to think about Alan Titchmarsh) grubbing around in the undergrowth, digging in the soil with their bare hands, filling their nails with muck it all sends a shiver down my spine and makes me glad to be this side of the television screen. And when they bang on about the quality of the soil and the value of a good compost, which they have made themselves, it leaves me shaking my head, incredulous that anyone could actually enjoy doing this stuff.
Then I am reminded that all the world’s a stage and all the men and women are merely players and I realise that the prospect of what I do for a living may not be that enthralling to all of those gardeners out there either. Perhaps if I was to star in some future television show, such as ‘Manager’s World’ or ‘Life in a Cottage Data Environment’ then all of those with green fingers may also look on in amazement and shake their heads, wondering why anyone should get such pleasure out of what I was doing. But I do and so do they and it takes all sorts to make the world.
Not liking something is not really an excuse though, perhaps it was when I was a teenager but if I want a nice garden to look at then I have no choice but to get on with it and so I have cut the grass, edged it and picked up all of the leaves and the garden looks nice and tidy again , at least for the rest of the week.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 