Gardening the Brazilian Way

I think we already established that I do not need any more books, but my constant will to rescue the needy and my inability to stand by and see an injustice made me stop in my tracks when attending baby’s school summer fayre last week. In glancing at the spread of books laid out (with great care, I must say!) I was horrified to see a copy of Tony Hawks’ “Round Ireland With A Fridge”. I first read this book too long ago to pin-point and my ownership of a copy had dissolved along with the friendship of the person who borrowed it. So technically, buying this book would not be adding to my collection at all, would it? And to see this piece on a table-top sale definitely qualified for inclusion in my rescue programme, even without having filled out a needs assessment form!

Oh, but look; more books with interesting titles and brooding cover pictures; more from those countless lists of books you should have read; and so it was that the “every item 50p” stall stole another £5 from me.

I immediately wanted to re-acquaint myself with the long-since-forgotten wisdom within so bumped the book I was part-way through to make a start on it. I won’t go into a detailed review of the book itself; that is for a whole separate post, because if you haven’t read it yet, you certainly should - but I will say that I am glad to have regained this particular piece.

Re-reading is not something I take lightly. It can often go so horribly wrong, as with watching a childhood television favourite. That horrific moment you discover the naivety with which you originally experienced the volume can leave one feeling cheated, vulnerable and a little ridiculous but in this case it worked out well. In fact, having changed my entire philosophy and life perspective since, there is so much more to be gained; least of all, the synchronicity of finding this book right now with its deeper messages calling out to me, regarding taking action, living your life and doing what you want to do.

And so it was, then, that on the first day of sunshine after around eight weeks of solid summer rain I found myself taking a short break from my gardening to read a quick chapter or two whilst drinking a deserved cup of tea. Four hours later; book read, too much tea consumed and a new skin tone slightly resembling a boiled ham and I realised I hadn’t made the best use of what could well be Summer. With so few of these days, it did not do to waste them and after all, reading was something one could do just as easily indoors in the rain, whilst gardening is much harder to do from the living room.

Not that the garden is a huge concern to me. Unfortunately my neighbours lack my vision and are not at all convinced by my attempts at suburban farming. Thus they cannot see the value in creating a beautiful hayfield of my lawn. I tried selling it as an issue of conservation- that these were all meadows once and for the sake of heritage we should all adopt this attitude, to no avail; neither are they embracing it with the same middle-class ecofriendly passion reserved for cycling, Hessian shopping bags and GYO vegetables in spite of my casual throwing around of words like ecosystem and natural habitat. So having frittered away much of the sunny day and with this one clouding over as I consume more time writing this, I now appear to have created an entirely new concept.

The little I achieved yesterday was a masterpiece of lawn edging. I skirted the mower around the outer boundary of the lawn itself, strimmed and trimmed the parts where grass meets border and am left with what my teens are calling a Brazilian garden; although with a centrepiece long enough in which to lose a small child, it seems more of a European armpit garden, but that does not have quite the same ring to it!