'THE SHED'

Next weekend I am going to venture out into the garden. (Or 'Beirut' as my daughters refer to it). Other than doing the 'dog poo run' (a joyous pastime) I have not really been out there yet this year. It shows, big time. I dearly love plants, but, sadly, Alan Titchmarsh I am not.


Last year, for the first time, I dabbled in vegetables (the growing you understand, I've been eating them in copious amounts for a while now) It did not end well. My tomatoes were actually edible and quite nice, but, strangely, they became cherry tomatoes. I planted normal ones but when they appeared, voila! cherry toms! I also had some measure of success with petits pois, in fact a little too much success. Now I love petits pois as much as the next man but I was giving them to friends just to get rid of them (and not all my friends like petits pois......evidently).


Anyway, working full time, keeping house and trying to find time to write does not leave me too much 'spare' time, so, I thought, this year I'd set up the garden to be as easily maintained as possible, whilst still looking nice.


A word from the wise. If you intend to do anything on these lines in your garden, I cannot stress too strongly, DO NOT read the gardening magazines to find out how. Well, not unless you've just won the lottery anyway.


The people who write these are incredibly wealthy!!! They blithely advise you to 'shingle' an area that tends to be in the shade a lot, to enable better drainage. Have you seen the price of those little stones?? I think I'd sooner get a couple of goldfish and call my badly drained area a 'water feature'.


Then there's my other 'garden problem'. Insects. I am ashamed to say that I am actually afraid to go into my shed. Why? Spiders. Oh, I know what you're thinking now. But these are big. OK, I admit that I am phobic, but these really are BIG.


In fact, the last time I was foolhardy enough to venture, unarmed, into that dank, dismal interior the spider that confronted me (and I do mean 'confronted', it reared up!) was so enormous, in the brief (was it ever brief!) time it took me to vault over the lawmower, impail my left foot on the grass rake and kick over a half full tin of hideous purple paint, I swear I noticed it was smoking a pipe and sporting a tattoo. This was big.

I guess I'll end up getting my beautiful, fearless daughters (did I mentionthey are beautiful? - they may read this) to brave the perils of 'The Shed' and dust down the mower, wipe the blood from the grass rake and plant my rather good petits pois.
Anyone out there like to put their name down for a few? Anyone??