Monday 23 June 2014

The Art of Nature (or, what I learned in my first year of having a garden)


  1. Seeds do not grow if you plant them in the ground. If you want to see anything at all happen, plant them in a tray first or get baby plants. Plant them straight in the soil and they apparently fall down a long tube to the centre of the earth. Which is a good start for a Technicolour sci-fi story, but less useful for us up here in sky-world.  
  2. The only way to make it rain is to water the garden. See also: cigarette/bus stop, pregnancy test/period. Speaking of which:
  3. Pregnancy and gardening don't mix. In the morning sun you may feel like an earth goddess, but come nightfall you'll be frenetically googling toxoplasmosis and wishing you could immerse the world in Milton. Also, you may not be able to get up again (see #9)
  4. Yes, it is a weed. 
  5. There is broken glass in the soil. You can find it easily by simply not bothering to wear gloves.
  6. Your soil type is 'crap'. You do not need a fifty quid testing kit to tell you this.
  7. Growing stuff to eat costs about four times as much as buying it in a shop. But it feels more moral.
  8. Slugs are from hell. The way they move is horror incarnate. They leave shiny trails of evil to taunt you. Tiny parasitic worms live on their semi-permeable skin. 
  9. You will always end up on your knees. Actually, this is just a general rule for life.