Today Oriana asked me to join her in the garden and push her on the swing. I resisted. I was on the sofa. It was cosy and I was tired. The Webbs had just left and it was time to recuperate from being up too late and drinking too much. And anyway Ian was zonked on the other sofa and sleepiness is catching. But Oriana was bouncing joyously on the trampoline and her entreaties through the window were endearing and I hadn’t paid her too much attention all weekend. She deserved some of my time.
I went out via the recycling. As bottle after bottle – wine, beer, champagne – clanged to the bottom of the bin, I could hardly forget that my exhaustion was self inflicted.
Now I love being a stay-at-home mum. I wish I’d had a career I loved so much that it had already lured me back to employment, but I didn’t. Those who don’t love their jobs, or need the money, seem to me often to be driven back to employment… driven back by the little munchkins they love so much their hearts could burst… if they haven’t throttled them first. I think I’m happy at home with my girls because I’m fundamentally rather a bad mother. I don’t worry too much if they’re stimulated. I play with them sometimes; I ignore them often. I listen to them sometimes; my mind wanders often. I love them to bits, but I am not the doting type.
But there I was, out in the garden on a damp cold February afternoon indulging my youngest daughter, pushing her on the swing, hoping she’d soon get the hang of swinging herself… actually, I think she can do it, but she likes the company so prefers to act dumb. Of course, my neglectful mothering technique meant that my mind soon began to wander and I was in the garden it was wandering along the lines of “Oh my God what have we done… I know nothing about gardens and this one’s huge.”
I started wandering physically as well as mentally from my maternal duties and pulling Old Man’s Beard from the plants near me. Soon I had so much that I need to dump it so I told Oriana I’d be back and went off to get the green wheelie bin. (Of course we’ll need to figure out composting at some point, but for now we’re green binning it.) I didn’t get back to the swings as I was diverted by the brambles smothering one of the fruit trees.
The brambles turned out to be climbing roses (probably!) but whatever it was, it was still wrapped around ever branch of the plum and even I know that can’t be good. Oriana helped to unravel it and cut it back before getting cold and abandoning me. But now I was on a bit of a mission and turned my attention to some dead stalks near another plum tree.
Now I know a bit less than nothing about gardening. To date I’ve pretty much stuck to sweeping up leaves and cutting back ivy. I’ve no idea what is good and what is not – I’ve only been tidying up, not gardening. That’s not so hard in a garden that had no owner at all for over a year.
But then I spotted some nettles and remembered on Gardeners’ Question Time they’d said it’s a good time to pull up nettles, a good time to get their roots. I pulled at one or two – nothing – another gardening disappointment. But with the third I learnt something I’d never known about nettles. Their roots are endless. I guess I’ve only ever yanked at them in the summer before when they sting your hands and cling to the ground like a drowning man to an overhanging branch. But these ones pulled up effortlessly, long purple roots stretching along the ground. I followed them around the base of the tree. Often when the roots stopped, it would be at another plant. Often that plant looked legitimate. There were a number of primroses and some tubular things that I imagine grow from bulbs but I’ve no idea what they are. But what I did know was that if there’s a legitimate plant there then the stuff around it was probably uninvited… I could weed it.
As I progressed round the tree I started to realise that all the grass growing there was also stray. It had looked like grass around a tree, with occasional snowdrops, which are already out in abundance and therefore identifiable. What I found was a flower bed, carefully planted and totally overgrown.
I weeded till light stopped play, as they say at the cricket. My hands are tingling from the nettles, despite my gloves. I didn’t completely blow the cobwebs away. But my wheelie bin is full. I am happy. I cleaned up a bit more of the garden than the bed around the plum tree but that was the highlight. I knew nothing, but by following one root I could work out what was good and what should go and make it look like a real flowerbed.
And how did I know, in all my ignorance, that it was a plum tree? Well the birds, squirrels and other wildlife had left the stones at the bottom of the tree and even I can identify those!
