Just back from the garden after l½-hr work (my absolute limit) trimming the ivy and other ill-defined tasks. I need to work off my resentment, so here’s a list of horticultural ineluctables.(1) Why is it that how ever many implements you take out of the shed, you always need another? And then another?
(2) Gardener’s World is like watching sado-masochistic porn when you get the heeby-jeebies over a pin-prick. There are people who seem to relish digging. Mind you, the earth they dig is remarkably free from rocks, roots and compressed density.
(3) Trimming ivy doesn’t sound much. What’s a pain is hooking out the cuttings without wrecking the contents of the flower bed.
(4) “But you enjoy the garden when it’s full of colour,” says my wife. Cruelly I point out that she enjoys using her well-honed teeth but finds it difficult to remain philosophical while the dental hygienist goes a’scritching.
(5) A garden creeps up on you like a mugger. Something that didn’t need doing this morning, suddenly requires attention now you’ve got a belly-full of lunch.
(6) Poets rhapsodise about gardens. But can you imagine Dylan Thomas doing topiary? One Plutarch doesn’t foretell a flock of horticultural rhymesters.
OK, I’m purged. Now for a chapter or two of Walter Pater.
