On Gardens

Today was a perfect drying day for washing, with bright sun and a stiff breeze. Unfortunately, before I could get to the washing line to take advantage of it, I had to remove a few hundred spiders who had built vast and beautiful webs across the garden, spun from washing line to fence, right across the path. I would definitely have preferred to delegate this to Chris, who is far less liable to panic when faced with arachnids than I am, but he had disappeared off to church and wasn't due back for several hours, and the gorgeous morning was going entirely to waste.

Reader, I coped. My first attempt finished when I walked into a cobweb at knee level (I had been looking for them at shoulder level) and had to run screaming back into the kitchen. I sat at the computer, said "nobody could expect me to deal with them" repeatedly and felt a total wuss. Three quarters of an hour later, I had A Cunning Plan. I had been wearing a short sleeved top and had bare feet inside my garden clogs. I changed into a long sleeved t-shirt, and added socks and gloves and a bandanna over my hair. Thus fortified, I picked up the Spider Stick (a long bamboo cane for removing webs and spiders from six feet away), and sallied forth. They've all gone now. (I shall wake up tomorrow and find the entire garden cocooned in revenge, I know I will).


That is not my garden. That is the small park five minutes walk away. I have a guilty fondness for the British Municipal Flowerbed, as seen above. No nonsense about drifts of toning colours or year-round interest here. It's bright clashing colours all the way, everything planned to flower all at once in a great glorious burst, then ruthlessly ripped out the moment it passes its peak (hence the bare earth in the foreground). I couldn't garden like this myself, I could never cope with the maintenance, but I love to look at it, before going home to my spider and weed-infested dump of a back garden (I have plans for it, but I'm waiting until the first frosts start killing the pests of both varieties off). Meanwhile I will continue to knit a green sleeve (which looks much the same as yesterday, just a bit longer) and watch junk television. There's a "Forgotten Pop Gems of the 1980s" on The Hits today with my name on it.