MY SUMMER PROJECT (or: Hoe Hoe Hoe) part one

I am not by nature a gardening man. I have a small plot outside my back door, approximately twenty feet by fifteen. Since taking over this house my gardening efforts have been restricted to a six-monthly opening of the back door, through which I emerge with a watering can full of triple-strength Weedol. I apply this liberally to anything that may have the potential to grow. Six weeks later everything that usually turns green has instead become a fetching dried brown. Job done.

This last few weeks, with time on my hands and the sun shining unnaturally and preternaturally early in the year, I have decided it would be nice to have somewhere pleasant to sit in the evenings with something cold to drink and something improving to read, both to be comsumed while reclining on a sun-dappled wooden bench or similar.

So I have put aside my life-long aversion to spade and hoe, and made a start on transforming my plot, which up until now I have graced with the phrase ‘natural ecosystem’, into such an oasis.

This work will involve (and this is by no means an exhaustive itinery) the following:

• Cutting down four grotesquely overgrown rose bushes
• Lifting a dozen or two foot-square concrete paving slabs
• Digging up and disposing of the root system of previously-listed rose bushes, and also that of some nondescript annual-flowering bush thing that the cat likes to sit under
• Digging and levelling the entire plot
• Disposing of all of the above, plus a great heap of domestic rubbish that occupies the west side of the garden, consisting of old electric fans, a dead vacuum cleaner, a dreadfully unfashionable plastic picnic set that currently gathers rainwater and is used by previously-mentioned cat as a watering hole, eight or nine plastic bags containing detritus from a previous fitting of a new boiler, some form of plastic riddle (the gardening implement, not the puzzle), an ancient and rusted ironing board, approximately twelve square yards of mouldy carpet that probably harbours several generations of mice, and a section of modular sofa that once sat in my living room along with a number of similar items until the Great Sofa Putsch of 2009 when they were ousted by the enormous over-cushioned item that now houses my lazy backside of an evening, and is used by previously-mentioned cat as a sunning spot and scratching post, leading to said sofa now resembling something hauled out of an Afghanistan target zone.
• Demolishing and disposing of a one cubic yard capacity concrete cola bunker, though this may escape its fate and, through judicious drilling of its walls and the introduction of internal platforms, grilles, etc be transformed into a post-modern barbecue.
• Covering the denuded ground with sand, then:
• Covering this with a selection of small stones, gravel, pebbles, etc, to transform the plot into a tiny Zen paradise.
• Radical pruning of equally overgrown holly tree before branches intrude any further into upper windows of not only my house, but house next door and possibly house on opposite side of street.
• Potentially introducing a small area for the growing of garden herbs. This may not happen as it will simply introduce an element of continuing work into the equation, and the whole point of this game is to have something that requires even less effort than the watering-can full of triple-strength Weedol.



There's even a little bin to put your
fag ends into

• Keeping previously-mentioned very large (thirty-four inches nose to tail at full stretch), very black, very inquisitive (he currently has his head stuck in the top of previously-mentioned coal bunker, attempting and failing to swipe something from the interior) cat from eating anything that may have been doused with triple-strength Weedol in a pre-emptive strike against guerrilla plant growth.

This will not be an easy job. It will in fact be a bloody hard job. In fact it’s sheer sodding madness. However, plans have been drawn up, jobs have been scheduled, garden clearance chappies have been researched (two hundred notes for six cubic yards of crap? Bloody Nora and other expressions of shock), materials have been costed.

So far one bush - the moggy-shelterer -  has been dug up in two days-worth of frantic shovelling, forking and axe-wielding. The first of the rose bushes has been attacked and has yielded its root system, which in turn is offering resistance and refusing to allow full extraction.

All of the planned work is to be done on a schedule that insists on completion either by mid-June or until I get fed up, throw in the towel and go back to the old watering can, whichever is the sooner.

I intend to be sipping on a chilled Becks Blue in my lovely new garden by the time the next heatwave strikes.

But right now it’s bloody raining and I have a Louise Wener book to get my teeth into, given the absence of Louise Wener herself to perform said act upon.

Updates will follow.

Over and out.