How Does Your Garden Grow

My Beloved does despair. I don’t blame her: I can barely look after myself. And now I have a small child. It does not bode well. Really, shouldn’t here be some kind of suitability or competence test?

Still, what safer place could there be than the garden? Fresh air. Soft grass. Pretty flowers. Birds in the trees. Sharp multi-bladed tools scattered around.

While I busied myself slicing through my electric hedgecutter’s cable, twice, little S was at liberty to become one with nature.

She shuffled across the lawn decapitating every daisy she saw. She chased the cat out of the garden completely. She found the freshly dug flower bed. She squealed with delight.

I smiled warmly at my little mud lark, forgetting momentarily that I have a high-powered cutter in my hands and pruning the roses a little more severely than I’d planned. Still, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - best to keep one’s bush neatly trimmed. Everyone always comments on mine.

I turned the implement off. And retrieved something that looked suspiciously like a cat’s collar from the teeth. The garden was quiet. A little too quiet. S wasn’t giggling anymore. She was chewing.

She wasn’t holding a worm in her little hand. She was holding half a worm in her little hand. Now I’m sure a bird, flying overhead, had simply dropped a half-eaten one and little S had found it. Or perhaps, just like that unpleasant incident at the transvestite cabaret in Berlin, someone had been surprised by a novelty sausage and tossed its remains as far away as possible and into my garden. Or perhaps one of the wriggly things had tried to climb the hedge, I’d inadvertently chopped it in two and one half had crawled back across the lawn.

Shit. She was eating a worm. Sorry, she had eaten a worm.

I considered my options. I could leave. Immediately by the fastest gypsy caravan in Warwickshire. I could confess all and move my things into the shed. I could pretend nothing had happened and carry on cheerfully, never mentioning it again. The course was obvious.

I scanned the garden to see if there were any witnesses, trying to recall the number of the Russian fellow I’d met while queuing for Cornish Yarg the other day. None of my neighbours were around. I smiled to myself and glanced back at the house.

T was at the window. She was simultaneously very pale and black as thunder. She jabbed the window angrily. I’m not sure but she seemed to be mouthing something quite violent at me. I wondered if she suspected anything.

She did.

I have moved into the shed.

Still, I’m not sure what all the fuss was about. Never did me any harm. Actually quite like them. Once you’ve rubbed off the mud, obviously.

Comments

[Incurable Insomniac]

Hot dogs contain sodium earthabates, which contain earthworms. We've survived.

I love your blog by the way. I found you through Chasing Vincenzo.

Cheers!

[Mrs RW]

You call yourself a parent!! Oh, I despair, I really do. In the future I'd look VERY carefully at anything T serves you for dinner.

[Carlton]

You're right, Insomniac, that's nothing wrong with eating earthworms - how many poorly birds do you see? (And thank you for your kind words about the blog - Mr RW has a lot to answer for!)

And you're right, Mrs Rw, there's nothing right with eating earthworms - how many happy fish do you see?

c.

[Thursday]

This will, of course, be something to tell S when she's a teenager.

[LondonGirl]

All kids eat worms at some point, surely? a rite of passage I like to think. And as Thursday puts it, a particularly fine story with which to embarrass her as a teenager.