‘Ooh, I’d love to have your job’. That’s a sentence we don’t often hear in the depths of a wet and windy January. It’s much more frequently heard on long sunny summer afternoons when our 9 to 5’er Ford Mondeo driving tie/suit wearing clients arrive home through the traffic and catch us working; maybe with the radio on and T-shirt off, happy as Larry building, planting and creating.
At this time of year however they lean over the piping hot radiator and look out their office windows – absent mindedly watching the guy raking the leaves – and feel a little less jealous, a bit more smug.
I think there’s a charm to winter gardening too though. That’s assuming of course someone is willing to pay us during these bleaker months. A nice hot flask of Tea, maybe a smoke, becomes all the sweeter.
We can sit in the van/jeep or under that tree and watch the rain do what it has to do. There is more time to plan, to chill, to think and yes to daydream. Later in the year we must make hay and make haste when the sun shines. Right now the pace is slower. Once the bank aren’t on our case too much we’ll put up with the shorter days.
Why did I have to mention the bank? Well, my wife works in one of the ones that are still here so I might have a different prospective than many. Make no mistake I’m under the same financial pressure as the next man but they (and when I say they I mean the humans that work in branches not the A8 driving executives who fucked it all up but still have the wheels not to mention their positions) have a job to do.
Defending the banks?! Janey, didn’t think I’d be going that route on day 2 of my little landscaping blog. Where would we be without tea though?!(he wrote a little less controversially). I contend it’s even more important than Guinness. Sure there’s all kinds of fancy coffees from the machines in Centra or Spar these days but really?? If earned, either through physical exertion or plan drawing, list making or whatever, you can’t beat it. Tea keeps us going. Guinness, or whatever tipple takes your fancy, is more a ‘fair fucks to me’ reward after the fact. That’s how I see it. Or used to see it. Fact is I haven’t drank a drop in 5 years, 4 months, 8 days and a few hours. That’s if you don’t include hot whiskeys of course. I don’t. Medicinal you see. Oh, and champagne of course. I figure it’s just downright rude to refuse a glass of champagne when offered. Funnily enough that has not tended to happen in the last 5 years or so. I blame the current economic blah de blah as Ross O’Carroll Kelly would say.
See, more self-disclosure and its only the first blog. Christ knows what I’ll come out with next. One thing I’m sure we can all agree on is how good tea is, especially when it’s raining and you’re wearing a hat, sheltering from it. No prizes for guessing what I’m just about to make. Then I actually do have a big heap of leaves to rake.
Slan
Mark
mark@sanctuarysynthetics.ie