Gardening

The Gardener has left the household, and I'm renewing my pleasure in the leisure.
Mowing the lawn, that looked from a distance like a gruelling sport, is actually very similar to hoovering, except with hoovering, the daisies stay on the floor. I have discovered the secret of the Scottish lawn- moss! My lawn is at least fifty percent emerald-coloured spagnum, but it's beautifully bouncy and lush and I love it.
I have been shaping conifers into pointy shapes with the blunt shears, and pulling up huge lines of blackberry plant whose route disappears under the fence; gradually, I have been hauling in all sorts of spoils from the neighbour's garden: snails, plants, a trowel, and I am on my way to a full set of garden furniture.
There are some squidgy rotten apples lying about the place, full of wasps, but I know their beastly tricks and am leaving them where they are to rot in peace.
I have bashed my head on the bird-feeder twice but not thought to move it yet, and I've developed a way of unhooking spider webs and hanging them on the next-door plant so I don't walk through them and collect spiders about my person.
Once, a couple of years ago when I had red woolly hair, I spent a morning pulling clematis from the apple tree, only to discover an entire colony of earwigs in my wig, which scuttled away to safety across the kitchen floor after I'd fluffed my hair with my hands. They had succeeded in scaring the living daylights out of me and I spent the whole day shuddering and jumping, believing that there was one last one in there in hiding, ready to summon the others back at any minute.
Now, I'm resting, and I know where the term 'green fingers' comes from, because my fingers are, quite liderally, green.
I have developed a Disneyish love of nature, to the extent that I have even bonded with a sweet little clothes moth that lives on the kitchen paper roll near the cooker, and that creeps round to the other side when I am boiling up pasta because it gets too hot when I turn on the gas ring. When I've finished, it creeps back round to its favourite spot.
Bless. Who would have guessed that I'm the same maniac who used to leap around the front room, clapping my hands as hard as I could whenever I saw a moth, and watching them turn to dust in front of my eyes?