Saturday 8 December 2012

THE INCONSTANT GARDENER

Inconstant, nothing to do with some people's wee problem.

We had friends staying in our house for a couple of weeks while we were away in Tasmania.
They like coming up here, in fact so much that they have put their house in Auckland on the market and are looking to buy in the area.
One of them is a keen fisherman and always catches fish (snapper mainly). When we get home its always a treat to find bags of filleted snapper in the deep freeze.

This time. in addition to half a dozen bags of snapper (home made fish and chips for the next month or so) we discovered that they had weeded my garden planters (two macrocarpa planters 2 foot high, 4 foot wide and 12 foot long) and planted vegetables - rocket, tomatoes, beans, spinach and something else. I'll just have to make sure that I keep them watered.

Gardening is not really my thing. See here:

HERE


The Old Girl is pretty good at it and this weekend she got stuck in to trimming, weeding and generally organising things. This meant that I couldn't:

  • Go kayaking
  • Watch TV
  • Play Play-station games
  • Read a book
  • Generally laze about
I had to (gasp) help.

She's the methodical, organised kind of gardener like most women.



I'm rip-shit and bust like most guys.



I dug, chopped, carried, pulled, loaded, swore my way through the day which included taking a totally laden trailer of vegetation to the refuse centre in Whangarei.
I liked the Toyota advertisement a few years ago of the guys on a Saturday reversing their trailers (all inexpertly) at a refuse centre. It was kind of nice seeing that there are a lot of other blokes who struggle with this.

I can reverse a trailer but as I only do it twice a year it can be a bit ropey.

As it was the guy next to me guided me in and, once I was sorted I guided the next chap in. It was all comradely and friendly.



One thing good about a day in the garden (apart from the fact that the place now looks like someone lives here and not like Miss Haversham's grounds) is the feeling of well-being you get. I feel now that we are about to have dinner (roast chicken and vegetables with a nice Pinot Noir) that we deserve it after some good honest toil (although I had to hide the first flowering plant of rocket I pulled out thinking it was a weed when The Old Girl identified the other two that I was about to remove).

2 comments:

Richard (of RBB) said...

Yes, there is certainly something about hard physical work that makes one feel noble. It cost me bloody $30, at the Nuova Lazio tip, to get rid of my trailer load of vegetation a couple of weeks ago.

THE CURMUDGEON said...

$30?
Bloody hell.
I thought the $18 the local tip here charged was usurous.
I can't understand councils charging people who go to the effort of responsibly taking their rubbish to a disposal point.
It just encourages scrotes to dump their rubbish by the side of the road or in streams and lakes.