We’re finally joining the masses and getting green fingered – better late to this lockdown party than never. First, though, we got some people who actually know what they’re doing to establish some kind of order in our back garden, and now it looks – in our humble opinion – the tits. I’ve been buzzing since it was finished a couple of weeks ago, bizarrely ecstatic to be swapping some fast London living for a bit of horticulture. Essentially, I’m now a 75 year old woman in the throes of retirement. Just with a 16 month old kicking about the place, tearing the odd leaf off the unsuspecting plant here and there…
Last weekend the three of us hit up the local garden centre for a much-anticipated trip. We’ve been before but our garden wasn’t worthy and, if you ask me, window shopping is rubbish. But come Saturday, the garden was primed and we were ready to get our green shop on. We even strategically left the pram at home to save space in the boot for all the goods we planned to fill it with; Rubes, we thought, would be easy enough to manage wearing her ladybird backpack with the little lead attached.
On arrival I got a good 15 minutes of pot perusal before we settled on a weighty trough that protruded from the garden centre’s large unwieldy wheelbarrow/trolly contraption, before adding in a couple of monster pots. I bloody love porcelain goods and was in full magpie mode, which created a touch of internal anxiety because our garden could only accommodate a handful of the 30 containers catching my eye, and Tom was putting my more punchy suggestions through a rather discerning filter. (A top tip for other garden centre amateurs is to start with the plants first so you know what you’re filling your pots with… another one to chalk up to experience!)
Next we were picking out flowers we liked, by which time I was starting to thoroughly enjoy myself. We reached the herbs and I heard a couple bickering behind me (he wanted to buy loads of one particular kind that looked a bit sad “Let’s get them all, see how they turn out, a bit of fun”; she was less than convinced “I thought we were just getting a few bits. I’m not sure we need all those…”). Since Tom and I had been getting along well, I felt smug that it was the kind of disagreement we definitely could be having but weren’t (whilst also thinking that, as much as I was excited to be channelling my inner Charlie Dimmock, this guy had perhaps overextended the word ‘fun’. I mean, dancing on tables is fun. Gardening is… relaxing or therapeutic, no?).
Anyway, I was finishing the selection of key players for our new herb patch when Tom, trying to prevent Ruby from faceplanting a puddle, piped up: “I feel like we’re just buying everything. We can always come back.” Until this moment I’d been successfully ignoring Ruby’s unruly behaviour. And right there, between the thyme and the tomato plants, I switched: “Why do you always have to do this?! I was having a nice time and you’ve just ruined it! We’re not buying everything. Can’t you just let me enjoy this?! HMMMMPPHHHH.”
Rubes took this opportunity to make a break for the puddle and fell over in it, covering her new white trainers and jumpsuit in muck, before commencing the kind of whinge designed by small children to push parents over the edge. I took the hump with both husband and child, swept up the latter and left the former to navigate the nightmare trolly situation, which now also contained a host of new plants that seemed to have wilted along with the atmosphere between us.
Now in charge of Ruby, I instantly regretted being – basically – a bit of a brat. She squirmed to be put down and then made a run for the nearest plant before I could shorten the lead enough to stop her. The thought later occurred to me that the backpack with rein is probably intended just to provide some light touch security as children learn to walk independently in a suitable environment; not to restrain them from trashing local establishments – herding a cat does not come close!
At this point I noticed Ruby’s arms looked a little pink: in our haste to leave the house we’d forgotten about sunscreen and the day was shaping up to be a scorcher. There was no shade in sight, so – in a bid to wrap things up – Tom went in search of compost. Meanwhile, in the full heat of the sun, I manned our stuff and obstructed a stream of fellow customers in the process. Our puddle-soaked offspring, who isn’t as light as she once was, wriggled somewhere round my knees whilst shovelling the remnants of a snack in her mouth. I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead as I wondered when the ordeal would end and how ruby of complexion Rubes would be when it did.
Tom returned with the first bag of compost, looking perhaps even more bedraggled than I felt. It seemed he’d tried to ‘double load’ and almost keeled over in the process. Once the trolly was filled to the max we headed inside to pay, completing a tense lap of the shop – struggling to navigate raised floor mats serving as some kind of unnecessary speed bumps – before realising we’d taken the wrong turn.
Finally at the checkout, still giving Tom the cold shoulder like the stubborn individual I am, I was surprised to find we (/I) had racked up a couple of hundred quid’s worth of garden goodies. I silently conceded that maybe we had bought everything after all. Before we trundled off with our ratty child and that God damn trolley, the checkout bloke said: “For future reference, just bring the big stuff here first, then we’ll put it all through at the end. That way you don’t have to take it round the whole place with you.” Tom and I looked at each other – was he taking the piss?
And that, friends, was our Saturday morning. Thinking back I can’t help but find it funny, especially once we’d established Ruby wasn’t too ruby coloured after all. Having only parented in a world dominated by the narrative of a pandemic, these innocuous mini dramas seem to have taken on a certain kind of charm. Maybe it’s because I know that, in a parallel Covid free existence, they would go down exactly the same way. There’s something oddly refreshing about that. So bring on the next family bust up, expected in B&Q on the hunt for bathroom paint.