Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that I'm more desperate in the domestic department than housewife. I unashamedly admit to defaulting to the Woolies readymade section for even the simplest things, like potatoe wedges and, who am I kidding, I'm never going to find myself baking cupcakes on a Saturday afternoon "just for fun" – should you stumble upon me doing such a thing I fully expect you to stage an intervention facilitated by a chilled bottle of Springfield's Life from a stone.
Anyway, all things considered, moving into a house with grass has taken a rather unexpected turn... I feel this rather disturbing urge to walk the fine line between green fingers and manicured ones. It started back in July when I found myself dead heading a row of Iceberg rose bushes and thinking, "I really should chat to my mom about the DO's and DONT's of pruning."
Long (fit for magazines like Good Housekeeping) story short, me and my rose bushes became quite close, holding each others' hand through winter frost, golf ball sized hail and hubby's enthusiastic nightly watering ritual with a rather highly pressurised hose pipe. It was all going so well... the phrase blooming marvelous comes to mind... buds, blooms, more buds, more blooms – and not a nasty rose munching aphid in sight. Until that morning *insert retrospective sigh here*
In the midst of my usual post-gym, pre-work rush I thought it only polite to greet my Malawian gardener, Jumbe. "Happy Friday!" seemed fitting, so, armed with my handbag, iPhone and car keys I popped my head around the patio door and stopped dead in my tracks. At the foot of the first rose bush in a line of several lay a pile of white petals, barely recognisable as if someone had popped each bloom through a pre-menstrual shredder. "I didn't hear a storm last night and I'm pretty sure it didn't hail again," I thought, as my eyes wandered down the row, the horror unfolding one bush at a time until I saw Jumbe (a.k.a Edward Scissorhands) merrily hacking away at the last bush. "Nooooooooo!" I cried, like a prima donna who's just found out that her skinny soya latté was made with full cream milk, but it was too late.
Like a deer caught in the headlights, Jumbe ceased hacking, looked at me as if he'd just seen Whitney's ghost, and I found myself thinking, "Maybe they're not that into flowers in Malawi..." as I took a deep breath and calmly explained to him that roses are meant to be left to look pretty and that, perhaps, he should leave the pruning to me. Gotta give it to him, he's thorough. Not a single bud escaped decapitation.
Lessons learnt:
1. Everything Jumbe does, he does thoroughly.
2. He seems to have a similar vendetta against weeds.
3. I have become surprisingly attached to my garden.
4. Hide the scissors on Fridays and Saturdays.
5. "Oh, so that's what happened to the Irises that popped up last week."
Anyway, all things considered, moving into a house with grass has taken a rather unexpected turn... I feel this rather disturbing urge to walk the fine line between green fingers and manicured ones. It started back in July when I found myself dead heading a row of Iceberg rose bushes and thinking, "I really should chat to my mom about the DO's and DONT's of pruning."
Long (fit for magazines like Good Housekeeping) story short, me and my rose bushes became quite close, holding each others' hand through winter frost, golf ball sized hail and hubby's enthusiastic nightly watering ritual with a rather highly pressurised hose pipe. It was all going so well... the phrase blooming marvelous comes to mind... buds, blooms, more buds, more blooms – and not a nasty rose munching aphid in sight. Until that morning *insert retrospective sigh here*
In the midst of my usual post-gym, pre-work rush I thought it only polite to greet my Malawian gardener, Jumbe. "Happy Friday!" seemed fitting, so, armed with my handbag, iPhone and car keys I popped my head around the patio door and stopped dead in my tracks. At the foot of the first rose bush in a line of several lay a pile of white petals, barely recognisable as if someone had popped each bloom through a pre-menstrual shredder. "I didn't hear a storm last night and I'm pretty sure it didn't hail again," I thought, as my eyes wandered down the row, the horror unfolding one bush at a time until I saw Jumbe (a.k.a Edward Scissorhands) merrily hacking away at the last bush. "Nooooooooo!" I cried, like a prima donna who's just found out that her skinny soya latté was made with full cream milk, but it was too late.
Like a deer caught in the headlights, Jumbe ceased hacking, looked at me as if he'd just seen Whitney's ghost, and I found myself thinking, "Maybe they're not that into flowers in Malawi..." as I took a deep breath and calmly explained to him that roses are meant to be left to look pretty and that, perhaps, he should leave the pruning to me. Gotta give it to him, he's thorough. Not a single bud escaped decapitation.
Lessons learnt:
1. Everything Jumbe does, he does thoroughly.
2. He seems to have a similar vendetta against weeds.
3. I have become surprisingly attached to my garden.
4. Hide the scissors on Fridays and Saturdays.
5. "Oh, so that's what happened to the Irises that popped up last week."
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