"So, how long will it take you to kill these herbs?"

This gardening thing is addictive. I've spent three evenings this week and all of last Sunday in the garden, hacking away at plant life and bagging up rubbish. We've made two trips to the dump, and have more planned. I've even managed to plant some more herbs -- and five days later, they're still alive, which is about three days longer than the last lot lasted. I'm attributing this to the primo organic compost that went into the top of our eco safe -- no more chalky, stone-strewn rubbish for me. A colleague recently told me that he'd been getting keener on gardening as he got older, and wondered whether it was some kind of primal urge to farm taking hold. I think for me it's more about being able to indulge my primal urge to destroy. It's all about the secateurs and the shears and the ripping up of the stranglers -- the ivy, the bindweed, and the inch-thick brambles -- that have taken hold of our garden. It's the satisfaction you get from housework but the results are far more visible and you're pretty sure you won't have to do it all again next week and the week after and so on. Well, I won't if I'm able to get some "hard landscaping" down in certain areas.



Like the Cylons, I think that I've evolved (as a gardener) and I even have a plan. Well, a small one, for the bit of land at the front. We're going to dig it over, take the weeds out, put down a mulching sheet, cover that with plum slate chippings, and then put out big pots of plants. It should look much neater than the geranium-infested, log-covered mess that it was ... and it should be easier to maintain. When my plants (inevitably) die off, I can just put out some new ones. I keep looking through my gardening books, trying to figure out what I want in the pots ... fascinating stuff.

Longer term, I want to move the useless rolltop bath in our bathroom down to that spot, fill it with soil and plants, and then put the head and arms of a shop dummy in it, making it look as if there's a person taking a bath in a sea of plants. Very Dali-esque (if you've ever been to the Dali museum in Figueres, you'll know what I mean). But that will have to wait until we've redone the bathroom, which in turn will (probably) have to wait until we've built an extension out back with a wet room in it. So, most likely, at least a year. But it's a plan.