Friday 18 April 2008

How Not to Impress – Or Compost is Sexy

It came to pass that I was showing someone that didn’t know me very well around my garden. Someone I quite wanted to know better. Sometimes I should know better.

This is what my garden usually looks like:
A pastoral idyll
A woodland glade
Sissinghurst
A garden

You know how it’s easy to take for granted what you see every day. Until you find yourself seeing it through someone else’s eyes.

It turned out that this is what my garden consisted of:

Paths with broken dragons who wanted to be real dragons when they grew up but remained stolidly concrete.
A compost heap.
An unmown lawn that had turned into a purple meadow.
Another compost heap.
An artefact made of breezeblocks and red render that wanted to be a bench in the Gaudi style but never quite achieved its ambition.
Dandelions.
A garden structure made of old ladders and guttering that wanted to be a Zen Japanese Tea House but had long since passed its ambition.
Another compost heap.
A greenhouse housing not greens but a thousand demi-johns with gross mysterious algae floating about in them in the post-post-modern grunge style.
Another compost heap.
More compost heaps in the art nouveau/vieux style.
A tin bath filled with mouldy water and old leaves in the Emin style.
Another compost heap.
Erosion.
Corrosion.
Exposition.
A compost heap.

I’ve just consulted Wikihow as to how to make a good impression on a man. Strangely there was no mention whatsoever of dandelions, compost heaps or mould.

I’ve also just consulted Google as to how to tell if a man fancies you. There was an awful lot of mention of me. And no mention of compost.

Since many people set such store on internet expertise I thinking that a bit of reverse experteeism could work here:

The most attractive thing a woman can have is a great number of compost heaps.

Sexiness and the ability to compost are practically synonymous.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You ought to find a nice husband who enjoys garden variety, but at the same time isn't garden variety himself.