Rob's Blog
How to garden like a man
13th Aug 2007 10:08
I spent most of Saturday gardening. I don't want you to imagine me me wearing a floral apron and kneeling on a KneeProtect
TM whilst carefully trimming the petunias. That's not how I get down.
I was gardening like a true man, cutting down large areas of brambles. I'm pretty sure that bramble slashing is the most manly of all gardening activities. And here's why:
- You legitimately get to use a long handled scythe; the weapon of choice of the Grim Reaper. That's right. You can swing away with wild abandon safe in the knowledge that you and Death have the same taste in horticultural weaponry.
- Bramble slashing does not involve 'cutting back', 'trimming' or 'pruning'. It involves 'brutalizing', 'killing' and 'slashing the shit out of'. That subtle difference in vocabulary makes all the difference.
- There's no grey area in the war on brambles. They're evil fuckers, short and simple. It doesn't matter how much protective clothing you wear, by the time you've approached them they will have brutally scratched you on the arm, eyeball and/or testicles. This constant barrage of physical harm provides excellent ongoing motivation. If you feel like yelling such things as "don't make me put my carbon-footprint up your ass!" and "you're jam!" that just adds to the entertainment value.
- When slashing brambles nobody ever says "if you put the effort in now it'll really pay dividends in late July". You can see the results instantly. The pursuit of instant gratification is one of the corner stones of being a man.
- It doesn't require a vast amount of intelligence. Provided you can tell the difference between your leg and a patch of brambles then you're well on the way to being able to write a thesis on bramble slashing. That's not important because men don't have the capacity for intelligence, it's important because it means we can be thinking about other things at the same time. Nothing would epitomise the very concept of manly gardening like returning to the house and announcing “I slew 12 square metres of bramble this afternoon, and came up with an economical solution for world hunger. All while thinking about sex.”
Right, on that note I'm off to sharpen my scythe.
