The Gardener’s Chanel

 

My shoulder hurts.

It’s my own fault.

Some months ago I was sat with a group of people in a nearby house. The conversation turned onto the subject of the house owner’s garden as she kindly made us all some tea.

I hadn’t seen her back garden but guessed it was something similar to the front garden. This had been covered with a black fabric looking sheet and then pegged down.

“We could dig over the back garden and grow vegetables,” the sparkly lady said.

“Oh that’s a good idea,” the jigsaw enthusiast replied.

A mouth watering discussion about vegetables followed, and I envisaged runner beans growing on canes, stately rows of fat onions, and tall rows of leeks standing smartly to attention.

“Are you interested?” the sparkly lady asked me.

I was. It sounded like a great plan and also a ‘thank you’ for the woman who lent us the use of her house every week for us to gather.

Around me there were other voices of agreement.

“What’s going on?” the owner lady asked as she handed out the mugs of tea.

The sparkly lady announced the peaceful military coup that was to take place.

“Oh,” said the owner lady. Gardening wasn’t her thing, and she wasn’t really interested.

“Obviously, since I have…” the sparkly lady reeled off a list of ailments that would prevent her from doing any actual digging of the garden… “So I can’t.”

It seemed that all the other voices who had sounded so enthusiastic had also wisely not committed themselves  either and that I was the only one to have actually have actually said, “Yes”.

“I understand you are going to do my garden,” the house owner said some time later.

My heart sank. It seemed I was the only one.

But I am a person of my word. If I say I’m going to do something then I do it.

I cheered myself up with a vision of raspberry canes and strawberries all bearing fruit.

“I don’t want vegetables,” she said. “I want low growing plants.”

“Oh!” I say.

“My garden once looked really lovely,” she said.

I love flowers, and so I smiled and ask her for a description of how it had once looked. I’m imagining neat lawns and beds of cascading colours.

“It was black,” she said. “All blank. It was just after the covers were put down.”

My heart sinks even deeper into my boots.

 

I went around to take a look at her garden. The black material which had now decayed was torn. Weeds had grown through this fabric and around it. They were high and obviously deep rooted.

Sparkly lady tells me she is actually free on the day that I’ve chosen to do some gardening, but she’s not sure she can make it. She will ring, but she doesn’t.

And so I begin alone.

The ground was harder than I imagined. And the day and time I’d chosen always turned out to be always the hottest of the week.

I would attempt to dig out the weeds for a couple of hours until I was thoroughly exhausted and demoralised; and I could see as I left that the house owner was also not overly impressed by the little I had managed to clear.

Eventually, I’d cleared one quadrant and planted ‘snow in summer’. Then I cleared out most of the next quadrant and planted campanula.

 

In August I was away, or had guests staying, and so could do no more.

I had suggested another blue plant for the third as yet uncleared quadrant. And the house owner ordered this plant which would be delivered in September.

This meant that this quadrant also needed to be cleared and soon.

The house owner helped a little, but despite the two of us digging for a whole morning we didn’t manage to clear it. Also distressing for me was seeing the return of weeds in the two quadrants I’d earlier cleared.

The snow in summer was losing its battle against dandelions and the invasive grass; and my heart sank even lower when I could see no sign of the campanula at all in the other quadrant.

I spent ten hours alone last week trying to clear this new quadrant and weeding the other two.

I was so pleased to have got these three quadrants done almost to my liking. It had been very hard unpaid work indeed.

 

My shoulder still hasn’t recovered.

Thankfully at the back of the bathroom cabinet was a tube of “Deep Heat” the balm that the miners in Yorkshire used after they’d bathed in front of fires in their tin baths.

It is wonderful stuff.

It somehow warms when it’s rubbed into the skin. It has a very strong smell which is not quite Chanel number 5. After using it I know I can’t go into anyone’s company.

With my aching back, my tender shoulder and this smell of ‘Deep Heat’ wafting around me, I was hunched like a troll as I opened the door after series of loud knocks.

“I’d like to treat you to a one day course, as a thank you for what you’ve done to my garden,” the house owner said.

I’m touched and grateful. I thank her and profess  it’s far too much, far too generous.

“Well, the fourth quadrant still needs to be done, you can owe me that,” she says.

My heart sinks.

It seems that somehow I am now in debt to her.

Bewildered, I hear the laughter from that first evening when the gardening idea was first mooted ringing hollowly in my ears.

I inhale deeply the gardener’s ‘Chanel’ and sigh.

 

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