April and May: Deadheading

 

On April 13^th Harriet and I celebrated our third-year wedding anniversary. Traditionally, it’s the year of paper; contemporarily, it’s the year of glass. I bought her Lucy Beaumont’s book, Drinking Custard: The Diary of a Confused Mum to fulfil the paper end of the bargain, and a vase from Nkuku, whose asymmetrical design was something of a gamble. What looks modern online, looks unusual indoors – like if you had a Mulberry model in your living room, the whole time you would be thinking, ‘Shouldn’t you be in GQ magazine? Why are you on my sofa?’ Harriet seems to like it though; well, she puts flowers in it and hasn’t ‘accidentally’ smashed it, so that will do.

What she gets me in return is definitely something I’m pleased with. My paper gift is Let’s Get Gardening, 30 Easy Garden Projects for Children. Although the book is aimed at five year-olds, my skills-set means I’m within the target audience.

I start straightaway and make a self-watering seedlings pot with Kit. This wasn’t what I meant to make. I meant to make a birdbox, however the instructions said ‘juice carton,’ so without thinking I used a plastic one - I should have used card. Given I needed to pierce holes for drainage at the bottom, the plastic proved tougher than brain surgery. Failing to make a breakthrough with the kebab skewers, I flicked the page and change project, adapting the feeder into a pot. I cut the carton in half, add water to the bottom, soil and seeds to the top, a hole and string to intertwine to the two. It was then left to Kit to add stickers. Two months on, I’m impressed with how wild and tall it's grown.

No watering required.

The following week we do make a bird feeder – this time with a cardboard carton. We cut, pierce and paint, before adding bird food and a twig. The twig is our eyelash flutter, the come-hither, a Victorian show of ankle, to tempt the birds. It doesn’t seem to work. It’s been up there six weeks and as far as I can tell no bird has been. It’s quite the indictment of our restaurant that no bird will eat there. The food is free and it’s in a nice part of town. We’re near Dunstable Town Centre. The birds could pop into Poundland, Computer Exchange and Bon Marche if they wanted to make a day of it. Yet they won’t eat at our establishment. I even took out a sponsored advert on the bird social networking site, Twitter, and everything.

Bird restaurant.

The next week we made a butterfly feeder, which involved driving lollipop sticks into a mouldy banana and affixing cut-out butterflies on top. Kit and I put the feeder in an elevated position to seduce the insects, yet just like the bird feeder no butterfly came. Perhaps I’m no good at subterfuge, this honeytrap game of trying to allure insects into my garden. Maybe I just need to be upfront and honest, say, ‘Wildlife, I have a son. A son that currently looks up to me. Now, this won’t last forever. He’s not Peter Pan and The Lost Boys. He will grow up. He will come to view me as embarrassing. When I talk to him about contemporary music or issues, his body will one day contort into full-on cringe. He will view me as a spent force, an anachronism, a relic of a bygone age. So while he still respects me, could you please come into our garden, so he doesn’t look at these things we’ve built as totems, totems to failure.’

Rotting banana on shed.

The next week I declutter the garden, saving the plants that look healthy and putting in the recycle bin anything that doesn’t. This rebooting makes the whole garden look cleaner with the express intention of making it run more efficently. When Harriet returns home, she points to an empty space in the flower bed, “Ryan, where’s that plant gone?”

“It wasn’t a plant, it was a weed.”

“No, that was an ice plant. It was from my nan's garden.”

(This isn't good. Harriet's nan is deceased.)

Fortunately, there’s more trimmings from her nan’s plant so all is not lost. Although I do worry that she is going to head out in the dead of night, on a revenge mission, secateurs in hand, to behead my dad’s memorial rose. I may have started a spiral of insensitivity that will consume us both and end our marriage.

Once we got over my heinous butchery, we spent last Saturday at the garden centre. Kit loved it. If ever I have a day with just the two of us, I’m taking him there. Effectively, it’s free childcare. Let the boy find a watering can and watch him go. He was so good at watering the plants a member of staff even offered him a job. Given the current cost of living crisis, I did consider it, but when I considered how much it would cost me in fuel to take him there and back I came to the conclusion child labour sometimes doesn’t pay.

Earning his keep.

To conclude my journey in gardening, Harriet and me cleared out the shed. This wasn’t because we wanted to do it; this is because we had to do it. A wild gust of wind blew over a blue pot of paint, rendering our shed floor well and truly smurfed. It meant we chucked out the old, cleaned up the new, making everything a lot more Marie Kondo. So if your spring cleaning has turned into summer cleaning, why not knock a pot of paint over, it’ll have you tidying up in no time.