Mum is not happy with the green ceramic stool sitting in my little corner of the garden but she can not do anything about it.
I told you! She says. Not to buy anything!
Um. I thought just no plants.
No! Don't spend ANY money.
Great. But it was too late.
She also does not think much of my wind chimes and rubber duckies. Rubbish!
Humph. I want to point out plenty of her rubbish cluttering up the garage where I'm meant to park my car, but will she listen?
Then she ropes me into helping her with the two haybales my brother had bought back from a friends farm up north. She wants the hay for the chickens.
Why don't you do anything I tell you to? She grumbles.
I go off to the far corner of the garden.
I am out of earshot there.
The chickens run around digging up my spider plants.
I chase them to the backyard.
I managed to plant some more clivia in Sock's Bed as my brother Vincent had some sitting in pots going yellow in the sun. Why don't I plant them in my garden? I offer. My brother Leyton shrugs. Why not? Vincent isn't around. He lets me have them.
Then I look at the potting mix sitting unused in their shed. He gives me that too, and two pots our Aunty had given them she had no use for. Vincent is too busy at work to tend the garden. Leyton is getting fed up with plants being bought and sitting in their plastic pots for years. Isn't he going to plant them at some stage?
I walk around my neighbourhood and see a neighbour doing some chainsaw massacre on the trees in their property. The carnage is left on the verge, free to take. I go and pick it up. It's not firewood, it's sculpture. There's one stump that has what I believe is an agapanthus nestled in the crook, having made a home for itself with some ferns. I put it in my rock garden. And two stumps, to put in the corners, perfectly round and the right size for sitting on. All for nothing!
My neighbours even chainsaw it straight so it's level to sit on.
Mum sees me sitting with my legs stretched out on my tree stump. I smile.
Huh. She says. You never do anything!
