Gardening at Night

26 Mar 2007

Day off today. Tried a bit of gardening. Started off with mowing the lawn, the most underrated treatment for stress, in the world, ever. Sometimes I forget how lucky we are to have a garden. I pruned a few bushes and trees, then I stared at the overgrown mess that used to be a flower bed for about two minutes, wondering how to tackle it without knackering my back and not being eaten alive by the entire race of spiders who live there. I didn't figure it out and so returned to the relative safety of the sofa and remote control. I inadvertently killed one the other day, something I hate doing. It's either karma or the belief that if I kill one, then I'll wake up one night with a ton of them crawling all over my face. Unfortunately whenever we open the patio door, about six young black spiders bolt for the door. They're harmless enough, but Rachael will freak if she sees one in the house. Cue comedy leaping into house and slamming the door before you can even say "pest control." But can I ever find any spider deterrant? No. At least nowhere I've looked, because apparently people want them around to get rid of flies. Stranglely, we don't have a problem with those. I'm not brave enough to look at the industrial poisoning agents online so we're stuck with the evil little bastards. I also saw a big fat luminous green spider be toyed with and then eaten by the local cat. It keeps hanging around our house and mewing in the patio door. He's a friendly ginger fellow called Chutney. He's owned by a man over the road, yet has a pink heart as a name tag. Go figure. Cats are weird creatures. I've never really liked them much, to be honest. I'm more of a dog man, even though I've got more scars from dog attacks than that of cats. I once heard somewhere that if a dog's owner dies, then the dog will lie next to the owner, howl a bit, then lie down next to the owner until it dies of starvation. Cats on the other hand, would apparently wait a while, then eat the owner. Part of me thinks that this is incredibly resourceful and the sign of intelligence. The other part thinks that this is creepy and strange. Although it's probably bollocks.