I'm a real weed in the garden

11:37am Friday 15th June 2007

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GARDENING. The final frontier. The terrifyingly-banal chore that robs us men of our last vestiges of street cred and forces us to cross time and space from idealistic youth to middle-class suburban slave.

I'm rambling because my shoulder and neck hurt and there are sting marks all over my arms.

It's all the fault of this monstrous outdoor activity that sucks away all of our spare time and money. And for what? So we can pretend we live in the country and that we like to be out in the open air?

DIY in the house is bad enough, but at least you can pretend you are showing off your working class credentials and are saving money.

There is no such excuse for gardening.

I spent most of a searingly-hot Sunday morning battling weeds and trying to mow huge stalks of grass.

It was my useless attempt to control nature after we returned from two weeks in Canada to find that a constant mix of rainfall and sunshine had caused the garden to go mad.

My grass verge at the front was a jungle of grass and sumac tree suckers. A colossal forest of bushes, which stands at the back of the verge, had taken over and was eclipsing our home. And ragweed and stinging nettles had gone berserk in the back garden.

Mrs Editor's Chair doesn't allow me to use an electric lawn mower, because she knows I'll end up electrocuting myself with it. So I turned to my trusty manual mower with its blunt blades and its awkwardly-fitted nuts which always fall off the side.

The mower sped through the grass verge at high speed with me in tow. But for some reason, the long grass didn't budge. I was forced to grab shears and start attacking each blade of grass individually.

Then I let rip at the bushes, maniacally cutting away so many leaves and branches that I filled an entire Wycombe District Council green bin to the brim.

But, despite all of this, the front still looked completely unruly and bizarre.

So I turned to the back and hacked away at the nettles and ragweed.

But as the sun beat down, I suddenly felt I had developed a hernia from all the cutting, snapping and lifting.

A sharp pain enveloped my groin area every time I bent down and I had visions of humiliating NHS operations.

Eventually, I gave up and went indoors with cuts and bruises all over me and sweat soaking through my entire T-shirt.

Mrs Editor's Chair began accusing me of catching some sort of killer disease from the sumac tree, and she lathered my arms in that white antiseptic stuff they cover you with when you have chicken pox.

My neck ached and I couldn't move my legs. It was easier running half marathons.

Later that day, we went outside again and Mrs Editor's Chair remarked she could see no difference to the garden.

It was as if I had never been out there. Admittedly, it is a hard place to tend to.

We once tried to hire the services of a professional gardener. The man arrived looking all professional, but when he saw the size and state of the enormous tiered frontage, his jaw dropped and he exclaimed: "That's hard work."

Well yes man, it is. That's why we were trying to hire you. If it was easy, we'd do it ourselves.

Needless to say, he didn't take the assignment. And now the weeds, and the sumac tree, are threatening to uproot our entire house.

Still, the hernia seems to have cleared up now and I'm slowly feeling like I want to try again next weekend.

Or maybe instead I'll try a safer pastime perhaps - such as rock-climbing or bungee jumping.