Forking Out
When I was about 17, I really liked the idea of being a gardener as a summer job. I'm not really sure why, I think it was because I liked the idea of spending my summers outside, getting a tan, doing some work which meant I developed my strength, and generally got paid for doing it.

I never actually got one, and instead earned my money acting as a pall bearer and occasional hearse driver, and not getting a tan. However, I've always wondered what it would be like, and generally had a much romanticised view of working as a gardener. This will probably come as a big shock to those who know me, and particularly my parents, as I've never shown any inclination to display the innate green-fingered skills with which I always believed I was blessed.

However, the other weekend I had the opportunity to get out into the great outdoors, and do some gardening for my mum and dad.

Four hours of stabbing a fork into my parents' lawn on a bitterly cold November morning later, with my wife adding such helpful comments as "Shut the door you’re letting a draft in." I had decided that I probably had a lucky escape.

Now I accept that some gardening jobs are less appealing than others, but sticking holes in a lawn, so that my dad could brush sand in, to improve drainage and kill moss, before 10am on a Saturday morning in November is one of the least appealing jobs I have so far found in the gardening world. It comes only slightly above shovelling cow shit into bags, to take home and add to the compost heap.

I think I'll stick to my desk job, and just accept I will never have a weathered tan and muscles born through manual labour, and just hope I one day earn enough to pay a seventeen year old to do my gardening, as I sit inside in the warmth and acknowledge that I've sold out.

Not that I’m there yet, you understand, but one day…

- posted by Paul @ 5:46 pm