MY HUSBAND KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT GARDENING...

So, it’s become apparent that as brilliant as Charlie is at fixing things, building things (from garden beds to houses) and maintaining our pastures and cows, he knows fuck all about gardening.

I should be fair; he is really good with natives, particularly trees.  My knowledge is quite limited in this area, though I am learning, but Charlie is really good with native trees.

However, that means fuck all when I have an acre of perennial and annual gardens to deal with.

When autumn and spring roll around every year, I curse the fact that we have such an expansive garden.

The pruning, weeding, planting, planning, mulching and cultivating required shits me to tears sometimes, and the amount of work is never fucking ending. 

Then of course, there are the 130 plus roses I have to contend with.  Those fuckers fight back when you prune them, and I have so many scars on my arms from the thorns, that I look like a self-mutilating emo.

Yes: I do wear gloves and long sleeve tops when I’m pruning roses, but don’t be under the illusion that those things stop thorns.  They do not.

However, I do enjoy the fruits of my labour, for the garden is absolutely spectacular when it’s in full bloom, and there is nothing quite as lovely as sitting on the verandah with a book and a cordie on a warm evening, and basking in the fragrance of nature.

There’s also nothing quite as awesome as the realisation that you’re eating produce from your garden.  Leaf, root and bulb vegetables, as well as fruits and herbs; there’s no end to what you can do with all of these goodies.

At the moment, Charlie and I are having a ‘discussion’ about the garden.  I have made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that there are to be no more garden beds built.  No more!

Charlie goes on a creative tangent, and I swear to God I come home from fucken anywhere, and there’s a new garden bed.  I’m like WTF?  Another one? C’mon!

So, we have a magnificent frame that runs beside the garage, and it has olives growing along them.  We’re training them; they’ll be espaliered along the wires, and form a beautiful ‘olive’ wall that hides the garage a little.  Charlie wants to build another fucken garden bed in front of it.  I’ve cracked the shits and said ‘no more’. 

Charlie then says ‘This garden bed can be my project then.  I’ll look after it.’

That’s when I declared the screamingly obvious: ‘Charlie, you know fuck all about gardening.  Not only would you not know the right things to plant in them, but you wouldn’t know how to maintain it.’

‘I know how to garden…’ he sulked.

‘Ahhh… pruning the lower branches off gum trees is one thing, but maintaining a perennial garden is another.’

‘What’re you saying?’

‘You don’t know how to garden.’

‘I do so!’

‘Do you know how to prune?  How to strike cuttings? Which plants are perennial and which are annuals? What plants get pruned and when? Do you know how to prune roses?’

‘With a chainsaw?’ he smirks.

‘Do you even know what type of plants we have in the fucken gardens?’

Charlie just blinked at me.  ‘No… but I could learn…’

‘You’re absolutely right champ.  You could learn, and you’d be a great student.  However, you can’t be fucken bothered with it.  Really.  Can you?’

‘No.’

Charlie spends hours at night time in the summer months watering the gardens, and hours on the mower and with the whipper snipper to maintain the lawns.  However, maintaining a perennial garden requires a completely different skill set. 

He has an absolute heart attack when I give my salvia’s and pentstemons their autumn prune.  Two thirds of the plant is on the ground, and we’re just left with startling sticks. This is normal, but he freaks out.

When I pull out the ever multiplying African daisies and the guara’s (butterflies), he nearly cries because I’m pulling out a good, living plant.  Dude, they’re taking over and smothering everything, I explain.  You have to thin this shit out, or you’re going to have serious problems.

After several years of the world not ending, and the garden not being a disaster area, he finally trusts me.  Can you believe it?  You think with a mother named after fucken flower that has a greener thumb than God himself, you reckon I would have picked up a thing or two, right?  Pffftt.

So, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that if I need it built, fixed, dig it up, planted, mulched, sprayed, mowed, whipper snipped or watered; Charlie’s my man.   Pretty broad spectrum, I must say, but not always the assistance I need; particularly at this time of year, where everything screaming for attention at once, and there are so many hours in the day.

I wish I was retired.

So whilst he’s chasing cows, burning paddocks, throwing out lime and whatever the fuck he does out there, I’m hip deep in perennials screaming for my love and attention.

At least someone loves me.

Peace out.