Gardening Therapy

The highlight of our Bank Holiday weekend (apart from the netball) was a mammoth gardening session. Now, my idea of gardening is to wander around in a floaty dress and big hat, humming Vivaldi and wielding a pair of tiny secateurs. A quick dead-heading of a rosebush here, the careful selection of a perfect bloom there, all laid across my trusty trug.

What we actually did was more akin to an Amazonian rainforest slash-and-burn. The garden is almost unrecognisable, and we appear to have nothing left in it that is actually growing.

I blame H (but then I always do!). In the Man versus Nature struggle, Man must conquer and subjugate. If the struggle was Woman versus Nature, we would probably come to some amicable agreement over a few glasses of wine – perhaps arrange a job-share or something.

I think the use of power tools is what attracts men to gardening. Who wouldn’t feel like a Master of the Universe with a hedge cutter in their hands? Well, me, actually. I always think I’m going to cut through the cable and electrocute myself.

I prefer the good old fashioned garden shears – the metallic slicing is so therapeutic. That busy, busy woman with the swinging ponytail, who blatantly queue-jumped in front of me yesterday, while she was yakking on her mobile? Snip! She won’t be so busy now she doesn’t have to put her hair up. That white van man who cut me up on the school run? Snip! He can yell abuse in a much higher voice now. Ah, the gentle joys of gardening.

Now that the weather is a bit colder, I am ready to hit the reds again, after my glut of whites and rosés. I am enjoying a glass of Château Saint Maurice Côtes Du Rhône (£5.49 Ocado - my auntie always used to call it Coat Jerome). It is quite spicy and tastes a little tannic, but that could just be that I am gulping it too fast.

I am looking grimly out of the window at the pile of chopped undergrowth which is still stacked up at the side of the garden. It will have to remain there until I can face bagging it all up and taking it to the dump. That is going to be a while. The last time I tried to force garden refuse into the council collection bags, I ended up looking as if I had spent my entire life self-harming, or wrestling with cats.