And it may well make me a pariah among the women of Ardlethan, but...
I hate gardening!
Sometimes I wonder if I'm missing a gene, or whether I just haven't found my passion yet - is it something that will kick in later in life? When I'm desperate for a patch of green to call my own when all around us on the farm is brown and bare? Or maybe when we own our own home and the patch around it I'll invest in making it beautiful? Either way there's a big part of me that doubts I will ever think of it as anything but a chore.
Despite this green thumb loathing it still embarrases me to admit that we really have no garden to speak of - except for at least a lovely lawn that the farmer is solely responsible for - planting, nurturing, watering in summer (ok, so I occassionally remember to turn the sprinklers on at night). Then there's a succulent that my lovely friend Suz gave me - it lives in a tea cup on the kitchen windowsill, but that's it! Unless you count some two thirds dead plants in pots out the front and a lot of weeds growing up through the pebbles at the side of the house.
But if there's one thing I've noticed since moving, there's quite the garden culture going on here in the bush - I think it's because everyone's got the space and everyone loves to take advantage of getting outside. I was actually asked to join the local garden club to which I scoffed "Unless you have a weed club you surely don't want me as a member." Nevermind the fact that it meets on weekday mornings so is incompatible with full time work anyway. And while I'm sure I'd love it as a social outing frankly I'd feel like (and would be) a complete fraud and permanently terrified that one day they'd make me host said garden club and ask to see what happened to all the cuttings they've given me.
The same way that my mother in law occassionally asks after the herb garden she gave us which has died or the citrus splitzer plant which not really hanging in there, so the farmer and I look at each other sheepishly and shrug "It's ok" and then only ever invite her over after dark (just kidding).
I did flirt with the idea of a vegetable patch last autumn and winter and even managed to grow (by pure luck of the season) some lovely cauliflowers and spring onions but this year I just couldn't be bothered. Terribly non-The Good Life of me I know. But the farmer's aunt and uncle keep us in a ready supply of winter vegies, citrus fruits and tomatoes, and the local IGA in Leeton has ripper local produce from all the horticulture farmers in the MIA so at least we're not lacking in the fresh and local food department because of my reluctance.
But what of beautiful flowers, gorgeous roses or just something fresh to cut and put in a vase when people come to visit? Well that would be lovely, my problem just seems to be planting something and then looking after it along the way.
It also makes we wonder at how I can be quite the neat freak about the house being spotless and the table being beautifully set when people come to visit and yet I can turn an almost complete blind eye to what's outside the front door, or what's not there, for that matter.
Sometimes I say to myself, 'well at least I like to cook', otherwise they'd probably have shipped me and my dead herb garden back to Sydney.
You are not alone ... I think I am better at killing plants than keeping them alive.
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