red rose speedway

Dripping with sweat after a couple of hours in the scrabbly jungle that passes for our back 'garden'.

I'm not a gardener, and I've never really understood the attraction. To me, gardening consists of standing around in rustic clothes, pointing at roses and other coloured and green sorts of things, and going "isn't it pretty". When I'm in the so-called garden, what I do consists totally of weeding and picking up dead leaves. This is not gardening, this is work, and not particularly pleasant or rewarding work at that.

Occasionally, such as today, I get the bow saw out and cut a tree limb off. That's not gardening either.

If Chateau VVB were not surrounded by so many eucalyptus and other similar sorts of trees that drop lots - and I mean lots - of dead leaves in our yard and in the pool, I'd probably be happier. All these trees are on our various neighbours' properties so it's not immediately within my power to do something about them.

Not that I don't think about it on occasion.

It'd certainly help to keep the pool surrounds cleaner although the best thing I could do to fix the pool surrounds would be to replace them. Currently we have bricks: oh yes, Chateau VVB is certainly well endowed with bricks, brick house, brick paths, bricks around the pool, brick driveway. So the pool is surrounded by bricks - with crumbling mortar, and some of the bricks themselves are weathering also - and sleepers.

Not beautiful clean tiles, on which an occasional palm frond might fall, to remind you that you're way north.

No, the bricks and sleepers always look untidy, rather than rustic, which I think was the original intention. So you sweep the leaves behind the sleepers where they look even more untidy.

All this, dear readers, is work, pure and simple.

Not gardening.

Offspring number two returns home tomorrow, so the dynamics of the household will change yet again. At least Mrs VVB will have some company while I'm doing the thing in Rocky.

And did you know that until the last election, I'd never heard of the word 'corflute', which seems to be everywhere nowadays.

How did this happen?