Heavens, my garden! It is transformed. Noel-The-Gardener and I hid in bushes and looked at the garden from all angles. We discussed steps, mounds and garden benches. He has found the only spot in Brixton where I could sit naked and drink coffee (and then remember my towel) undetected, although why I would want to do such a thing I do not know. We ate lunch. I was Agog for an hour.
Things I have discovered:
1. Manfred Mann is A Close Relative Of His
2. As is a Bond Girl, because she could do a good Russian accent
3. Chasing the dragon ain't all that
4. He once picked potatoes in North Wales
5. He went to Harrow
6. He visits a grocer just for the spelling (brockley and crots)
7. He couldn't get Rod Stewart to No. 1
8. Most of us spend our lives running away from the truth about ourselves, which makes us Miserable
9. We are like coatstands
10. He likes endive dipped in aioli
11. His Uncle referred to Monte Carlo as "Mount Charles"
12. He buys all his gardening tools in France
13. My garden has "a good vibe" and now has "places in it for kissing people in"
14. He has a cousin called Prospect, who is Dead (and therefore has few prospects)
15. Marry someone who makes you laugh at least once a day, and twice on Sundays.
Oh yes.
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11 comments:
Your gardener is my new guru. Please update us regularly with his thoughts on life. I'm not sure I can make any further decisions without consulting this green-fingered oracle.
Hot update: as darkness fell, Noel was found in the shed, which No Human Can Penetrate, as it contains 3 broken lawmowers and twelve million slugs eating each other.
He has left a 6ft high pile of dead plants and that on the place where the lawn once was. There are no more plants in the garden, hardly, mainly because they have been brutally cut back and removed as Dead or Very Diseased.
Nevertheless, he suggests I 'move about the space' with a drink and 'get my head round it' in time for h is return on Monday, whereupon he will remove said debris and take it to the eco-dump. Except I can't see anything because of all the dead stuff. I am Suddenly Very Tired.
One of us is barking, and I don't think it's him.
Hmmn, he sounds too good to be true. Are you paying him day by day? He will come back won't he?
Sorry, I'm sure he is a guru an' all that.... just worrying....
I think this time of year you are supposed to slash and burn, but it's a bit scary isn't it?
I only grow cement mixers and scaffold boards so i have no way of knowing if he's following correct procedure you see.
I have paid him for today. He returns on Monday. If he does not, I will seek him down and burn his hair.
Yes, it's terrifying. But not as terrifying as it was before. Of that much, I know.
I need a lie down again.
Where are the before and after shots cookie?
I used to like Manfred Mann, but mainly for Paul Jones, but I was a mere child then.
Mount Charles, that only marginally better than saying everything beyond Dover is "abroad".
I'm with him on French tools, my best implement is a wee rake-cum-pick thingy from S of France.
A dead Prospect is a hoot, bit like Ivan's post on the old British soldier whose obit was in this week's Telegraph, he was called Pine-Coffin!
I've picked tatties too, we used to get "tattie days" off school. Pre mechanisation it was fucking hard work. We did it for pocket money, but whole families of travelling people did it for a wage. We got so knackered after two days we tried to cover the tatties up again. I'd have died in a gulag.
A - I can add nothing to your comment (splendid), other than to say bloody good idea re before and after shot, except the only picture I will be able to take in the morning is of the Pile of Stuff, and the corner where I shall apparently be kissing. (Seeing as the only living things left in the garden are slugs the size of my arm, this is Not an Attractive Prospect.)
Time to get that salt shaker out there and dehydrate the sluggies. Years ago I did that thing of putting a bowl of beer (the cheap kind so as not to waste) out as gardener advised. Slugs are supposed to be attracted to the dish, fall in and die. Well, DO NOT let your demented wire fox terrier out in the area. The only thing worse than a dim witted sober wire fox is a drunk, dimwitted wire fox....
Any hedge hogs round your way?
They are rather partial to slugs as i understand it.
Martina that is an EXTREMELY funny story. Was it OK? I have been eyeing up slug pellets, but they are Bad, aren't they?
Phillip - no. You got any? Pop 'em in the post - I'll transfer the postage costs via PayPal.
I suspect there is a reason that Mr Christmas had to put a postcard in the window of the hardware shop of the Chinese gentleman. Any good gardener, who is marginally the correct side of sane, gets plenty of work by word of mouth. You could always pretend it's your bonfire and set light to it on 5th November (having first checked there are no hedgehogs and removing the cat you had thoughtfully placed there for warmth).
Excellent tip re. bonfire, except the cat stays. That's ALL I'm sayin'. Suddenly, the debris has Possibilities.
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