retirement and the wife

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its strange how my wife totally ignored any thing to do with the garden for more years than i care to remember, until i retired, then she decided after watching gardening on a shopping channel to become a gardener, next thing we have a parcel of plants arrive in the post, no warning no prep, so a hasty trip to the garden centre to buy containers, spade, fork, compost, more plants etc, ( you get the picture).then read what to do find the drill and put up hanging baskets wall troughs, drill drainage holes in containers, turn the kitchen into a potting shed and many hours later we produce three hanging baskets four container pots two propagators with seeds on window sill me with backache and dirty nails, the wife with compost everywhere including in her ears ( don’t ask) that was in febuary, now i am hooked and have found something my wife and i can do together , the blind leading the blind but great fun, and i never knew garden centres could be such fun.
my next adventure is cuttings, having read about this in the gardening mags the wife brings home, feel ready to have a go, wish me luck.

Bank Holiday.
most people went to the coast or other such places, and in the past when the Kids were home we too would have suffered the joys of traffic jams and rubbish food as well but not this time, the Kids were either working or taking the grandchildren to the coast to,,,etc etc, my wife Norma and myself went to the garden centre, it was great, Norma pottered about in the bedding sheds talking to the experts who work there, I wandered around the tools and other wondrous things in boxes and packets , then found the cafe,with a Garden book, pot of tea a large cake, heaven, then Norma found me, get a trolley she said and follow me, well compost by the three bags as it is cheaper that way, canes for the climbers, top dressing for the pots and more plants than garden to put them in,.
to the checkout the shock of the till, but never mind we get a loyalty card and 4000 thousand points ?? , next i have to push this lot to the car with the help of a bystander, load the car (thank god the seats fold ) and home, now the fun starts.
Can I have a cup of tea No, first unload the car, my back is complaining by the time this is done, at this point Norma has turned the dinning table into a potting bench and I am running about like a headless chicken fetching pots ,moving pots , carrying bags of compost cleaning up the mess making more room in the garden to put all this green stuff,blimey I feel as if I am in training for the 2012 games, the end is in sight,No,, No, now we water the plants already in the garden make sure they are all right.
still when i fall into bed i sleep the sleep of the knackered, next morning who is the first into the garden to check on the plants ME. goodnight .

today I decided to try my hand at cuttings so out I go to the large green prickly shrub growing in our garden and take some cuttings, back in the kitchen I put them in water while I remove thorns and put plasters on,
then the fun, first I cannot find the mag: with how to do the cuttings, so wing it 20 cuttings later and feeling like a real gardener i put the propagator on the window sill washed up and sat back contented.
I managed to leave them alone for three days before having a peek,most are laying sideways and looking a bit sick, one or two are still sort of standing up,just have to wait and see and find the instructions on how to take cuttings, the large green prickly bush is a Berberis

• 28 May, 2011
• 5 likes

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