I am still digging up the garden.
Obviously I don’t means that I am digging it up at this very moment, whilst I am writing these words. That would not be a good idea. Very expensive computers and soil do not make for a very good pairing. In fact I am now sitting on the taxi rank, having first changed out of my filthy shorts and swabbed away the worst of the grime in order to look at least moderately respectable as long as nobody looks at my feet, which are undeniably filthy, even though I have taken my boots off.
It is a long, slow job, and the novelty of digging up weeds is beginning to wear off. In fact I think I can safely assure you that it has thoroughly worn off and now I am sick of it.
The garden was very, very weedy. I have had to dig over every single inch of it, so it is a good job it is small. Most of the weeds had been thoroughly compressed into the ground by the indifferent boots of various painting blokes, and everywhere was a knotted mass of tangled roots.
I have tried to rescue as many of the flowers as I could but do not know if I have been successful, and I have been quite astonished by the number of snails. There were dozens and dozens, hiding in the cracks in the old stone walls, if we were French we would not need to go to Booths for the next fortnight.
I have almost finished, and another day’s digging really should do it, if I don’t get too disheartened to bother. I have discovered that progress has become slower as my enthusiasm has waned, and I am trying to keep my enthusiasm burning as brightly as I can for the last days of the battle. Once it is done then it will be done for ever, and I will only have to weed it occasionally, on sunny days when I feel like it. There will be no lawn to be trimmed and no more tiresome chores than there absolutely must be. It will be a happy-ever-after.
There has been quite a bit of rubbish to be dragged out of it, the most surprising part of which has been the discovery of about fifty identical beer bottle tops in the flower bed by the road. We thought that somebody must come past regularly and lever open their bottle of beer between the stones, leaving the top behind. I have thrown them all away but regretted it afterwards when it occurred to me that I could have drilled a little hole in each one and hung them on a string above the gate to make the offender feel guilty.
Mark has mounted the water pump. We have been dragging this monumental piece of clutter around for the last fifteen years. It was a piece of ancient junk which had rusted away in the barn of our French farmhouse, and a few years ago Mark sanded it down and repainted it, with the intention of doing some vague something with it, we never quite decided what.
We still don’t know exactly what, but it is now mounted on a board and adorning the new flower bed, where it is going to be a Water Feature of some kind, probably dripping water irritatingly into a trough below. I wanted to add a drowned fairy to the water trough, but Mark was less enthusiastic. I am going to add some fairies anyway, probably doing something reprehensible. I have got some of Lucy’s old Barbie dolls which could be enlivened with some modelling clay, I will have to have a think about it.
In other news, Oliver’s girlfriend has come to visit. She is a cheerfully pleasant young lady who clearly regards Oliver as a fount of sensible wisdom, which has amused me. We have not seen very much of her yet because of the endless digging, but with any luck we will catch up with them after work for a bedtime gin.
I am looking forward to that bit of the day.
It will be a jolly sight better than digging.
