Hurrah for Gardening

I'm a bit nervous about writing this bit, since I don't want to put anything in the Blog which will make you, dear reader, think any less of me. However, having considered the fact that this would probably not be possible anyway I thought I'd come clean. The fact of the matter is that I don't like gardening. There, I've said it. You could never call me "green fingered", unless I've been dealing with a tin of appropriately coloured paint. As a professional programmer I take pride in finding solutions, creating them and applying them to a problem. Just once. This would not seem to be how gardens work. You can spend hours digging, mowing, trimming, and hoeing to get a garden which passes inspection - that is you can, I'm going inside to play a computer game or write some software.. The problem is that six months (or even less) later you have to do it all again. And you have a sneaking suspicion that in the long term the weeds are going to win anyway.

I have broached the subject of concrete, gravel or other technologies to ease the gardening burden but these have all met with strong resistance from those in absolute power. The fact of the matter is that we have to have a garden with growing stuff in it. And our garden isn't even that big. And you can do the whole thing over in less than a day. And I still don't like doing it. Ho hum. I have been told that I will learn to like gardening as I get older, and my perfectly manicured lawns and interesting shrubbery will be a source of endless joy. I remain to be convinced on this one. I'm tempted to call on some of my gardener friends, the ones who get me round to fix their computers. I'm wondering if the line "My garden's crashed, one moment it was working fine and now it's full of green stuff which looks like it might be a weed. I know you like gardening - could you come round and mend it please.." would work...

The reason for this tirade is that, of course, today I had to do some gardening. A bush in the front flower bed has been causing offence and it is time to terminate it with extreme prejudice as the CIA would say. Calling the "thing" a bush is paying it rather a complement. It is more a collection of bushes which have undergone a number of mergers and acquisitions to become a composite. It was therefore great fun to remove. The discovery of a highly thorny species lurking in the thicket half way through the removal process, which went through my gardening gloves like a hot knife through butter, only added to the occasion. But I had the last laugh. If you think my day was bad, then the assorted items I removed from the ground and took to the tip had an even worse time.

The only problem we have now is that we have to find something to fill the hole which has been created. This means a trip to the garden centre to find something to bury..