How does my garden grow? Unnaturally sideways and sodden
IT feels like the final insult. One last parting slap in the face from a winter that has so long outstayed its welcome that it must now be in the running not just to be the longest, but the rudest, season on record.
From my centrally heated kitchen, I look out my (mud-spattered) patio doors, beyond the soaked, filthy, mouldy patio tiles that once seemed like such a bright idea, and there is no doubt about it: the grass is growing.
And it’s not alone. That hedge that collapsed forward under the weight of the snow has resumed growing, but, still bent over, it’s now expanding horizontally instead of vertically. My two mature trees are boasting buds and have both stretched by a couple of feet to play havoc with what little light there is. The plants and shrubs that survived the freezing temperatures are sort of spewing out leaves and shoots in a sporadic, decidedly unhardy fashion. Unbelievably – and three months later than usual – my daffodils are out. And I couldn’t be more disappointed with any of them.
There are years when I welcome the annual waking up of my winter garden – but like everything else about this wretched season, this year’s new growth seems out of time, inappropriate and vaguely indecent. I want to be wearing my shorts when I give the grass its first cut of the year; right now, if I were to risk breaking the lawnmower by dragging it across what used to be a lawn but is now a mossy, soggy bog, I’d need to wear rainproof trousers, several jumpers, a raincoat, gloves, and, quite possibly, protective goggles. But I know that won’t happen because the ground is nowhere near hard enough to take the mower – yet still it grows.
By the time we hear those lawnmower motors echo across the weekends, expect to hear them accompanied by several small explosions. Never, in the field of human endeavour, have our back gardens so closely resembled No Man’s Land.
It’s not laziness – oh alright then, it’s not laziness – that’s preventing me attacking the garden and weeding, cutting and strimming it into shape. It’s also fear. Fear of hypothermia, electrocution – and there are patches of my back garden where I’m fairly certain it is possible to drown. Obviously, because I am an Irish mammy, I have been making regular visits to the clothes line throughout this cursed winter, but I have returned from them all looking as though I’ve just run a cross-country race (let’s not even dwell on how the washing has fared through all this.) For weeks, we have kept a mop and a large towel on the floor at the back door; both are pressed into action on a daily basis. When the dog goes out to use nature’s facilities, he brings them all back indoors with him. Right now, it is honestly difficult to tell where our kitchen ends and the marshy swamp that used to be our garden begins.
AND of course, that was the whole point. I will put my hands up now and admit that it was my idea. My lips may even have shaped out the words ‘outdoor room’. Not one made of wooden decking, I laughed with a confidence I can now only barely remember – because that would be insane in Ireland – but if we chose very pale stone tiles for the kitchen and extended them out to make a new raised patio, then it would give the impression that the floor just continued all the way out. And you know what? It does. We now have a muddy, wet, mouldy floor inside and out.
I have to tell myself that eventually, the sun will come. We will throw those glass doors open again, take the covers off the wooden furniture (I literally dread to think what lurks beneath), and people will come to drink cold beers and say, wow, your floor extends all the way out into your garden, how clever!
By then, I have to assure myself, that cursed floor won’t be muddy or mouldy. On our perfect lawn, children will play (I’ll hire a few in) and the dog will run happily around without leaving more footprints than a Midsomer Murders crime scene. I will be in shorts, of course.
In the meantime, I can only wonder what made Mary so contrary. I dream of silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row. But how does my garden grow? Horribly, patchily, depressingly. Right now, I would rather cut my clothes up than cut the grass, I would rather do hard time on a chain gang than turn over a sodden flowerbed, and the idea of spending a few hours in a garden centre is right up there with time spent in Dante’s Inferno. At least the inferno would be warm.
So here we are, all our gardens rudely growing. Nature is an affront to nature. We’ve given up on spring, but summer? Honestly, we’re more than ready.