And on the seventh day she bitched about how much her back hurt

24 October 2008

It’s Saturday tomorrow. The weekend. I’m very excited and do you know why? It’s all those leaves out in the garden that I’ll be raking up. The compost bin is very full at the moment, so tomorrow’s rakings will have to go into a plastic sack for the moment. But having had a potter around the garden today I was far more thrilled about all those leaves than any sane person really should be.

I cycled to the post office today and cycling through a sea of leaves on the pavement brought a smile to my face and I was sorely tempted to stop and have a surreptitious kick and swoosh through them. This was just autumnal glee. There are way too many leaves out there beyond the garden for me to let myself think about. And anyway, the composting part of my mind was still contemplating the soggy rain-soaked ad paper I’d just seen on a neighbour’s front lawn. I wanted want it.

Down on the patch there’s actually a new vegetable in town. I know, it’s very unlike me to have done anything proactive at this time of year. Autumn is more about pulling and rejoicing. And raking of course. But lo, turnips are in the ground, they’ve been thinned and transplanted and seem very merry and happy to grow. Plus, it makes me feel much better about all that moss that’s grown around the stupid onions, to see happy new vegetables in happy brown earth, being happy.