Anyway here, for your amusement, are some photographs of the garden taken mere minutes ago. If you are ever feeling anxious about your own garden, I suggest you bookmark this post and look at these photographs a bit.
Photograph 1: An exciting vista from just outside the French windows.
Includes view of shed (contains three broken lawnmowers, slugs and compost), and A Chair. You may also see - if you look carefully - an enormous pile of dead stuff obscuring the lawn. To the left you will see next door's fence, currently held upright with a piece of blue baler twine. In the left foreground is a piece of trellis, hanging on by a single thread of green baler twine.
Picture 2: The other corner, where I will apparently be kissing under a Bower of Bliss.
The Bower is, as you can see, currently rather sparse. Again, A Chair insists on being in shot. In the foreground are the remnants of a brutally-pruned bush that was once green but is, to my horror, becoming variegated (but yellow and green, not white and green. Ghastly.) Noel suggests I buy a 'funky old chair' and put it in the corner, and look in the attic I do not have for old plastic toys, which I should hang from branches. This apparently will create a Conversation Piece (e.g., "NWM, what the fuck is a three-legged Barbie horse doing in that tree? And what's Action Man doing in the rosemary? Do his Eagle Eyes still work?"), that will have my friends and family rolling in the aisles, a.k.a. the (now non-existent) flowerbeds.
Picture 3: A thrilling view from By The Shed.
This elegant view takes in the French windows, the brutally pruned rose and the ghastly variegated bush. A Chair features. The pots, once full of lavender and rosemary, are now Empty.
The window you see is my bathroom window. TwatBoy lives upstairs. I am to drink a glass of the wine and walk around my estate and "tune in to the vibe". The only vibe I can tune into is not one I would wish to experience much longer, and it will take more than a glass to get me to venture outside again today.
The fact is that it looks better now than it did before he came. I only wish I were joking.
16 comments:
do not despair, NWM, my garden (shared with neighbours) looks like it's been blown inside out with the gales we're having up here. the rockery is quite destroyed... may i suggest a hebe heartbreaker when you visit the garden centre, it turns bright pink in winter & stands out amongst the rest of the decay.
Your garden looks like the ones at Buckingham Palace compared to mine. I will post some pix on my blog in the next couple of days to make you feel better...
pix at my blog
ps. may have to remove the photos fairly quickly... or I might be in bother
I see Great Potential, NMW. On the ground in the centre, I see a scaled-down version of the Rheims labyrinthe picked out in granite sets and blue glass blocks - on summer evenings, you will make your garden a place of magic by putting on the labyrinthe a spiral of lit nightlight candles (placed inside small baked bean cans, labels removed, for safety). There's your talking point. Around the sides you will grow Plants That Have "Properties". Have you room for a witchhazel? You will source a real besom and keep it in the garden. Everyone who sees your garden thus "made over" will come out in goose-pimples with the wizardry of it all.
Oh, yes, you will hang from the branches of the witchhazel prisms (not "crystals" but prisms because they refract the light Magically, but people will think they are crystals) and authentic tinkling temple bells. And a solar-powered, stand-alone fountain thing.
A multi-pane exterior door would look very nice. How about an arbor type thing with grapes or wisteria growing on it? You could hide under that and no one could see you. Here everyone goes for rusty artsy metal sculptures from the Goodwill or off the curb. This does not meaning old yard equipment. Toys hanging from trees? What was your gardener smoking? HGTV shows tha garden designer named Matt who goes into small city gardens and does makeovers. The gardens look good but they never tell you the total cost for the labor, construction, 4 million plants etc.
I read in a gardening magazine that the post-apocalyptic look is very zeitgeisty.
Do you think he's trying to create one of those creepy Eel Pie Island affairs with the dead dolls?
Best I come round next week and have a look. I'll bring the gin.
Well, if she is bringing gin, I'll come over too. Just remember my mantra : Do not drink and prune.
I'm pleased for once that I'm not a fucking home owner.
Martina - how wise you are - but I don't think there's anything left to prune, is there? I thought we could just drown NWM's sorrows and plant a few tasteful bulbs in those empty pots. Do come too.
Oh PLEASE hand the Barbie horse and other anatomically challenged plastic toys up in the bowery!!!! It would be an excellent conversation piece.
I think I may have to do it in my own garden now.
J
I am DELIGHTED by these many and excellent comments!
I shall reply properly after Noel has been and gone and I have a Real Sense Of What Is Left. However, I am sure gin will be needed.
Wendy, am off to look now - is it too late?
Indigo and Anoymous - you should meet.
NMJ - I had a hebe once. In fact, I had three. I don't know where they've gone though.
Mikey - I feel a bit weird.
Fwengebola - shut up, you smug bastard.
Yes, it's so much fun paying an extortionate amount of rent to a top hat wearing moustachioed cackling landlord for a property I'm paying not to own.
Poor darling. Do you need a cuddle?
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