There is a quiet madness that takes hold of people when they reach their sixties and start acquiring secateurs.
Until that moment, grass is merely something you walk across on the way to the pub, and soil is what gets under your fingernails during a punctured tyre emergency. But suddenly, as if summoned by an unseen botanical entity, you find yourself standing in the gardening aisle of a DIY superstore on a damp Tuesday morning, debating the relative nitrogen content of liquid seaweed extract.
Some folk do. Not me. I have often said of our garden, the best strategy would be to “slab the lot”. But I’ve noticed Mary has turned to green-fingered activities more than she used to. Planting things, watering said plants and so on.
Our garden is a modest rectangular plot behind a semi-detached house in Coventry. It contains a lawn that goes up hill. And hedgerows and shrubs that grow like mad during the warmer months. The apple tree produces edible apples that mostly fall off and roll down the lawn. And a hydrangea of such monstrous, unbridled aggression that I suspect it is harbouring territorial ambitions against the neighbours’ fence.
We typically have to resort to getting a gardener in to attack the shrubs and conifers since trying it ourselves would require a jetpack and very sharp shears.
Last weekend, armed with a pair of heavy leather gloves and a rusted spade, I set out to “shape” one of the flowerbeds. Two hours later, covered in dirt and spiderwebs, I realised the flowerbed now possessed the geometry of an unmade bed, while the privet hedge had treated my trimming as a light massage.
The suburban garden teaches us humility. You may lay down weed-suppressing membrane woven from space-age polymers; you may spread three inches of local river gravel; yet within forty-eight hours, a dandelion will burst through the tarmac with the triumphant arrogance of a Roman conqueror.
I like a nice garden. I’m not opposed to them at all. As long as it is not me who has to make it charming.
Safe to say, then, that I have not been inflicted by the urge to garden in the same way that many of people my age do. The fascination of it is lost on me. I’d rather read a good book. For me, slabs a shed and a yard broom are enough.
Although, perhaps that is precisely why we do it. In a world governed by digital intangible abstractions, there is something deeply satisfying about getting your boots muddy. And losing a war to a bush, then drinking a mug of cold tea on the back step while the rain starts up again.