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Raking it over
by David Hill
Uncultivated confessions of a grumpy old sod.
There was a time when I considered a career in gardening. The appeals were obvious: the green sward, the unpredictable exotics, the long periods of nothing happening interspersed with bursts of frenzied activity, the exciting flowerings, the grim battles with invaders. Then I thought, hey, I can get all that just by watching the Rugby World Cup.
So I never became a horticulturist. The only seeding I’m associated with is my bottom one at the local archery club.
Various things stopped me. I lack a sense of humus. I lack a titanium hinge in the middle of my back.
I also lack the tools. My DIY kit for inside comprises a pocketknife for fixing the toaster, and a hammer for knocking in screws. My outside kit isn’t much better; I’m the sort of man who calls a spade a where-the-hell-is-it?
I lack the knowledge; I thought biennials were the ones that die this year instead of next. I lack the commitment; my garden maintenance involves glancing out the window three years after planting and saying, “Oh, look – that thing with the white flowers has turned black/fallen over/covered the clothes line.”
There are other reasons for my horticultural haplessness. I could never accept the Sod’s Law (such an apposite one for gardeners), which decrees that your flowers always reach their best while your friends are away, and your vegetables follow suit while you’re away.
I’ve never achieved the necessary fluency with the second person pronoun, as in, “You’ll be wanting some of your copper oxychloride to stop your plums getting your leaf curl … Your buddleia won’t be doing too good in your damp corner there.”
I’ve never achieved the necessary economic capital, either. I can’t afford the bookshelves for the garden books. Has any PhD student ever calculated whether the vegetation felled to produce a year’s gardening books exceeds the vegetation grown in a year’s gardens?
I’ve been let down too often by the gods of gardening. Ceres has proved cere-ously fickle. Consider the time when, painstakingly and painsbringingly, (see earlier ref to back), I put in a bed of new peas and marked it with four twigs. No peas appeared, but three of the twigs erupted into leaf.
I’ve been let down by others as well. Gardening is the one area where the blossom of my life has sometimes blighted my day. Yes, Beth has not always shown unqualified enthusiasm when presented with the ninth drumhead cabbage in a fortnight. When I expostulated about the starving masses in Asia/Africa, she offered to find me the address of a shipping company.
My gardening has also been beset by professional problems. As someone who tries to write for kids, I’ve met too many Sarah Snails and Sammy Slugs to feel easy with the genocidal aspect of vegetable farming. Pause here to note that R D Blackmore claimed “any ass can write novels, but to make a vine needs intellect”. I’m pleased to see that Lorna Doone hasn’t lasted well.
A few things do grow in our garden, in spite of me. They include our lemon tree, which has shown me there’s a lot to a freshly squeezed lemon. More than meets the eye, you might say.
But I still regret sometimes that I’ve never made it as a horticultural hotshot. I’d like to drive an SUV like the one I sometimes see around town, with the logo ARBORS – GARDENS BY PIERS PRETENTIOUS. One reading REJECTIONS – PROSE BY … doesn’t have the same cachet.
I’d like also to write a garden book. If you write a garden book, you get to say things such as “a garden is a projection into the physical world of the soul of its maker” (sic – which is how I felt after reading the sentence). Judging from my part of our section, my soul is twisted, furtive and parasitic. That’s right, just like the convolvulus.
Generally, though, I accept my limits. Greta Garbo may famously have said, “I want to be a lawn,” but I’ll settle for being just a grumpy old sod.
