Painful Pastime

When looking at other bloggers descriptions and photos of their beautiful gardens they conjure up images of warm sunny Sundays pottering in the garden, pulling out a little weed here and another there, whilst enjoying a peace and quiet only broken by birdsong. If only that is what it was like in my garden.

I love my garden...when I don't need to do anything in it, but, as we adjoin a field that has been 'set aside' for at least the last ten years, every weed growing out there also spreads into our garden and it ends up as a battle field...me against weeds (odd how the pretty wildflowers that grow in the field never end up in our garden).

Anyway, as soon as I step outside, firstly the sun goes in, then there is usually a mass evacuation of aeroplanes from the airport flying overhead, meanwhile all the neighbours start their lawn mowers and strimmers and every child in the locality will find something to cry about. Maybe they have been stung by one of the extra large stinging nettles that seem to grow in our area and constantly manage to generate a sting that penetrates even my extra thick gardening gloves or maybe they too have been attacked by the abundance of cleavers that wrap themselves around ones limbs leaving a horrible itchy rash or were they attacked by the dastardly vicious red ants that lurk under every flower pot just waiting for a leg to run up before they start biting their victim with gusto. Gardening is a painful business.

I wish all weeds were like Forget-me-nots..up they come every year, flower beautifully, are easy to pull up when they have finished flowering and without having to do anything more, up they come the following year just as beautiful and they do not inflict any pain or injury. That's the sort of plant I like:-)

There are some good things about gardening though. I like the way my friendly Robin follows me around and puts his head on one side when I mumble curses after a weed has inflicted another dose of pain and I like discovering Slow Worms hiding in sunny parts of the garden soaking up the warmth and I actually rather like snails as long as they keep away from my vegetables and Sweet peas.

I also like finding signs that the foxes and badgers are still visiting the garden, although, today I found a very gone off hens egg that some creature had left in the flower bed. Unfortunately I stuck my trowel in it before I realized what it was so just to add to my painful Sunday gardening experience, the rest of the time was spent trying not to breathe the very smelly odour that emanated from the egg..even the Robin found it too much and flew away:-)