The previous week

The previous week was a bit of a letdown as far as my new found hobby of toodling around with gardening is concerned.

First, over the last week end and then some, the phone lines in our village went dead due to someone from the local Public Works Dept, merrily went and penetrated a major telephone cable while drilling into a nearby road.

That took care of telecommunications for almost 5 days.

Well then, in the absence of time spent over the internet, what better occupation could there be than to take my gardening experience up to the next level - Weeding!

Hmmm.

I had watched Krishna, weed away on his haunches and knowing that there was no way I would be able to mimic the same dexterity, found myself a nice small wooden stool and began applying gloved hands to mother nature.

Unfortunately I do not have the spikey weeding  gizmo like the one Krishna has so I had to rummage through my tool box until I came across a rusty old screw driver that I thought would do the needful.

Fifteen minutes down into tugging, scraping, even scrapping, with some real stubborn well entrenched weeds I quickly realized the difference between a seasoned young man who does gardening as an occupation / vocation and a much seasoned older person who is giving a shot at a new found hobby.

Quite soon, my index fingers and thumbs were getting sore with all the plucking, tugging and digging in spite of the gloves – in fact I should think the gloves actually made the going that much more difficult and clumsy. Well in a way I was glad that Krishna from the hardy gene pool was not around to witness the bumbling of the delicate saab ji. But what could I do? It was either the sloppy groping with gloved fingers or the efficiency of using bare hands. Due to my preference of eating food with my fingers, I was wary that no matter how well I may scrub my hands, the thought of getting some dirt and what have you from under the finger nails, find a way in to my digestive system  deterred me from adopting the latter method over a clumsy yet prophylactic toil.

About an hour or so later, it occurred to me that there was a very real possibility that my chest had happily fused with my thighs. I began entertaining images of, my neatly folded into a frog like postured body, being gently carried to be tucked away into bed to thaw out with a nice hot water bottle. But such indulging grace was not to come my way. Very slowly I creaked myself back to erect homo sapiens form so that I may review the results of my high noon toil. I saw, I had managed to clear out a patch of about 3 square feet in size. Not much, yes, but enough to make me do the “YESS!” thing with a smile.

Meanwhile, yesterday after watering the peripheral plants and the fruit trees at the back, I took time off to visit a couple of nurseries and the internet, to check out the hand tools on offer. Oh there were all sorts of stuff that one could buy, strap around the waist and strut around the garden like a male version of Lara Croft. But I decided to stay calm and only buy according to the need of the hour. After a brief formality of exchanging paper for metal, I walked out of the nursery equipped with a proper weeding tool, a small pick axe to get in amongst the flower beds and a netted ring to attach to a long bamboo stick in order to scoop some of the perus that have begun showing up on some of the higher up branches of the guava tree.

I look forward to a brand new day tomorrow with some brand new tools.

Cheers.