'Work' as in working not at home and being paid for it. I've always worked, thats what happens when you are born working class there's no real escape from it, I suppose. I have thought I could possibly pass for middle class but there's something about the middle class that I just never got, like owning your own house. Part owning a house does not count apparently - in Auckland at least. And I can't be upper class because I won't inherit, I've become resigned to it, so I am back to work but thankfully not the 'system'. I've filled out yet another IRD tax form and enrolled in another Kiwisaver.
For those who don't know the 'system' is, its a type of government when the richer people get the poorer people to work for them while they tell them what to do. We always used to talk about the 'system' in the library when things were breaking down. It was always the system's fault, because if we tried to fix it ourselves we got blamed as it wasn't our job to fix things, because we weren't the boss.
However, it seems like I am a special case because, I can't really be bossed around. I have learned this the hard way. I resist all attempts for others to do so, because, if they really knew how to do things properly they would actually do the work themselves, so my logic goes. Nobody has a right to tell others what to do when they won't or refuse to do it themselves. So that is why I don't make a particularly good librarian, because of government interference, but I make a great gardener.
So I am only a tiny bit apprehensive of 400 residents of Waitakere Gardens telling me what to do, and hope they let me get on with it, because the way I see it, they've given me a gift of my own patch and paying me to garden, dressing and keeping it permanently. If I can't garden the backyard where I live..well I might just move into the Waitakere Gardens in 13 years time when I turn 50. I think that might even be a possibility, although the job doesn't appear to come with a grace and favour shed.
Mary Lennox from the classic Frances Hodgsen Burnett children's book 'The Secret Garden' asked, "might I have a bit of earth?" Nobody was looking after it, so she went and cared for it and by caring for it made it her own. I loved that book as a child, even though I had no idea what a moor was and how could a house have a child in it that nobody even knew about? I could not imagine a house so big you could get lost in it because I lived in a shotgun house where you walked in the front door and could walk straight out to the back. As for a walled garden...how could you lock a garden? It wasn't until I got into the creation of gardens that I realised a garden cannot just be a lawn and some trees. A yard is not a garden. I just think people need somewhere to belong and to thrive and I can think of no better way than to garden and if you don't have one - quit your day job and start one. You won't regret it.
