This is the month it all starts to come together for amateur gardeners up and down the country. All that sowing of seed, ramming our fingers in hole after hole, followed by months of secretly taping Gardeners’ World.
Replaying the highlights late into the night we hang on to Monty’s every word, slurping pots of tea and wiping chocolate digestives across our open mouths as the Master tutors us from his walled paradise.
There are times I feel like a member of a cult with that unique pleasure of dressing and smelling like a tramp, fingers blacker than a coal miner, scouring the land for offensive weeds to extinguish.
On BBC 2 Scotland there is also the excellent Beechgrove Garden filmed over the border and a bit of reality grit to Monty’s Southern Utopia; did you actually know there was a BBC 2 Scotland?
At last value for your licence fee just when you thought the BBC was a pile of compost.
The Scottish offering is a bit more relevant to those of us in Northern climes but, this year with summer days in abundance, the ground has been bursting with activity both above and beneath.
There is something raw about re-connecting to the Earth…it’s a base pleasure you simply cannot buy (stop trying to sound like a Sunday Times twat…Ed).
I have a clipping on my wall which goes…”I cant believe I used to have sex 20 times a week but now I’m a bloody good gardener”; you see gardening is sex and with it’s very own steep, often cruel learning curve.
If there are sex addicts out there then I confess; I am a gardening addict. The joy of watching things grow, of the life that a vibrant garden attracts and the ultimate – feasting on your labours – cannot be matched.
Many a night I have watched an invasion of masses of bees seeking out my flowering beans to shed their beans in the process. They descend as if on a bomber command raid, low under the clouds, before locking on to their targets and, eyes popping, fill their boots, tongues lolling dementedly.
Landing like Harrier jets onto their chosen pad, they latch on and wiggle back-ends like Turkish belly dancers on acid before flying off for a snooze; this is a bee orgy here in my back garden.
One of the earliest and easiest for the amateur gardener are potatoes; all you do is stick it in and wait for the bush to grow and flower. When you start digging for your prize it’s almost as exciting as when you first fumbled with a bra-clasp.
The discovery of those round, milky white objects of your desire, about to crumble on your tongue (are we still talking spuds here? Ed) causes knees to knock and the heart to race faster than the spotty Corsa drivers around the local estates.
It’s akin to peeling back the sheets to find all those months of coaxing and patience have all been worthwhile. You dive in…to the spuds…and gorge frantically, insanely, rabidly even only popping up for air.
It’s over in a flash leaving you heady with elation and spent. Throw in some mint or fresh chives and who needs to spice it up anymore than that?
There are so many delights to behold for the vegetable grower but its important to remember that, in the garden, size really does not matter.
Tomatoes are the fruit equivalent of women. Every man has to have them, they take months of gentle persuasion, loads of pampering, have to be bathed daily and fed exotically before finally they bloom into wild and bountiful plants offering to drown you with their ripened pleasures.
Beetroot is another wonderful vegetable and dear old Billy, ex-landlord at the Bear, used to tell me that beetroot gave you the horn and was a lot cheaper than Viagra. By then approaching 80 it did make me wince.
A jar a day and he was chasing his missus like a madman around the pub cellar…which explained the absences for several days on the trot and the odd black eye.
Pull one from the garden and it’s like discovering a submerged cricket ball with leaves. Whether you grate, pickle or roast it, beetroot is a marvellous creation…horn or no horn.
I spend most days finding something to do in my little garden and I have Guru Ken to consult from the nearby allotments if the Grasshopper needs his Master.
So far I reckon – after five years – I am about 11+ level so there is a long way to go but then again I still have no idea about women.
This Never Happened to Monty!
The other night – this is a true story I kid you not – I was pulling my spuds when I heard from behind my walled gardens the unmistakeable sounds of our cricket club Secretary.
Her Ladyship was out for a walk with her mother – The Angry One – and daughter – The Orange One and had obviously stopped this family trip to shamelessly blag some free food.
As I peered over the wall I was met with the steely gaze of The Angry One as The Orange One chewed her gum, earpieces fixed and absolutely no interest in my spuds.
“Who’s left all these weeds over this wall?” asked the old girl “somebody’s been chopping down.”
“I’ve no idea” I offered “my chopper’s far too small for all that mess”
“Well its a disgrace…come and clear it up now!” she barked.
Now my back wall is like Beecher’s Brook and as Red Rum died many years ago, I was not full of ideas.
“Somebody’s left this…its a disgrace” she said determined to ruin the peace of another day of the good life.
I tried, helpfully, to suggest that it could not have been me as there was no way I could get my little chopper over that wall and had not mounted anything as big for many years.
By now The Orange One was looking as if she might create an orange puddle on the floor. Grudgingly, we reached one of those life saving compromises Her Ladyship and I often achieve at our club committee meetings to ensure we all get home before midnight.
Her Ladyship began to gather up the offending weeds as I found room for them in my compost bin, noting there would be additional space for an elderly lady if she did not pipe down.
In keeping with the modern world, The Orange One, failed to lift a manicured finger and The Angry One cussed away under her breath, even throwing over an empty can for me to recycle. I resisted the temptation to crush it somewhere.
In the age range between The Orange One (could not give a stuff) and The Angry One (sadly cannot now remember giving a stuff) lay Her Ladyship and Yours Truly; and the moral of this story?
Well, maybe that’s one for you to work out.
Rose says
How quintessentially British in outlook and tone, with a reliance on bodily functions, female anatomy and double entendres that make the ‘Carry On’ films look PC ! I would expect nothing less from you Mr Wilson 🙂 Truly hilarious…. ‘Carry On’ sir …. 🙂