Grass? It’d Better Be Smokable

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! More like a garden is a lovesome thing – not! I’ve spent far too much of today cutting grass – with a pair of secateurs. I can’t begin to tell you how much I have loathed the whole experience, and I would like to take this opportunity to tell Poldark what he can do with his scythe…. I always suspected that gardening is not for me, and now I have proof. A more singularly pointless exercise, I cannot imagine. Having previously lived in flats, I have not had to deal with all this palaver before. Parks, woods, huge landscaped Capability-Brown-fests, I love them – as long as some other poor fool is doing the grunt work. Faffing around with garden plans, flower pots, herb gardens, all excellent. Weeding and cutting grass, not so much. The whole enterprise is that most awful worst of both worlds: time-consuming and boring. I would have gladly kept on ignoring the wretched plot but it was beginning to look a little ‘Day of the Triffids’. It was only a matter of time before my neighbours started a petition. If I’d had a tree in the blasted garden, I would have contemplated hanging myself from it. But no, all there is is blasted grass as far as the eye can see. To paraphrase Sir Thomas Beecham, “You should try everything once except incest, morris dancing, and gardening.”

I now have a new theory that it was cutting the grass that tipped Adam and Eve over the edge, although selling the whole of humankind down the river just for a bit of novelty is a bit much. What I like is cities, pavements, bars, restaurants, manicured gardens maintained by people who are not me. You get the idea, I’m sure. Maximum kudos to all farmers everywhere. I know they have machines etc to help, but it’s still my idea of a living hell, with extra dust. I am definitely a town mouse, no doubt about it.

It reminds me of one of my favourite Talking Heads songs, Nothing (But Flowers):

There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
You got it, you got it
We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
We got it, we got it
There was a shopping mall
Now it's all covered with flowers
You've got it, you've got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
You've got it, you've got it

Years ago I was an angry young man
I'd pretend that I was a billboard
Standing tall by the side of the road
I fell in love with a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers

   The highways and cars
   Were sacrificed for agriculture
   I thought that we'd start over
   But I guess I was wrong

That song always makes me laugh. It’s the ultimate anti-eco song. I used to love planting stuff as a child but I now realise that it’s the biology I like – the magic of germination, creating a plant from seed. I planted a thriving orange tree and a thriving mango tree when I was a kid. I also grew some maize but my father made me cut it all down as growing maize was not comme il faut. No, me neither; all parents are crazy. Still, now the wretched grass has been cut, I am looking forward to the bit I like – flowers, planters, herbs. I’m considering a mini apothecary garden. It’ll be awesome. In the meantime, here are some of my favourite builldings, with nary a blade of grass in sight. As for smokable grass, just say no. That stuff will make you psychotic. Only if you are unlucky, you say? Tell me this, have you won the lottery even once? How lucky do you think you are, really? Exactly. In the meantime, I will be looking for plants that smell of diesel fumes and nitrogen oxides; all the lovely stuff that makes London so great to live in. Just kidding 🙂 As penance, I leave you with Thomas Edward Brown:

A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

Rose plot,

Fringed pool,

Ferned grot,

The veriest school of Peace; and yet the fool contends that God is not—

Not God! in Gardens! when the eve is cool?

Nay, but I have a sign:

‘Tis very sure God walks in mine.

Wishing you all a cool, scented arbour when the going gets tough. Pip pip.

(Photos: Wolof Building, Senegal; Church of St George, Lalibela;  Chrysler Building, NY; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Guggenheim Museum, NY)

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