'Yeah, Good Girl'

My big plans for Chickie’s Adventure Playground have been scuppered by Accountant and the manual labour I had planned for some lucky landscaper has become mine, all mine. As such, I have spent three days in the trenches.

Whist Accountant was schmoozing with others of his kind at a conference, I was home alone juggling three boys, excavation, a wheelbarrow and multiple trips to B&Q. At this point, can I please ask B&Q to design a trolley for lone parents who can’t and don’t want to try and lift 100 litre bags of gravel and soil in and out of a normal shopping trolley because that is all that’s provided for greenfingered parents and their tots. On this occasion, I was fortunate enough not to require the services of a chiropractor but I suspect I was just lucky.

The other problem with a shopping trolley filled with gardening paraphernalia is that all baby has to do to amuse himself on his afternoon jaunt around the garden centre is turn around and help himself to the weed killer and toxic shrubbery. May I be so bold as to suggest, a low platform for compost type materials, a suspended shelf above for plants and a baskety bit at the end for poisonous substances and then a baby seat, far far away from all that other stuff. Simple yet genius, I know.

Fed up and needing the comfort of someone else to suffer with me, I tracked down an unsuspecting member of staff. Poor little Scott was in the wrong place at the wrong time. One minute he was enjoying a spot of light pruning and some jovial banter with his co-worker, the next he had an order for 10 large bags of play bark and 1 sack of gravel to be loaded onto my awaiting trolley and deposited, via the checkout, into the back of my motor.



Please see photographic evidence of 1. the ten wheelbrow trips and results of my 24 hours of weeding 2. one of the ten bags of bark I had to lug out of the car 3. the finished article complete with picket fence. I even had to use a saw! Can I also mention that, once I weeded, I then spent an hour levelling the garden and then a further four hours and another trip to B&Q to cover the area in three layers of weed killing membrane. And... I spent an hour attaching a twiney screeny fence thing to the boundary. And... I had to take up 30 stone slabs previously around the edge. And...I had to prune back the trees. And... I had to cut all the old roots out of the ground... And I hurt my head and my hand. Sob.

When Accountant arrived home looking refreshed and glowing after his fine dining and nights of uninterrupted sleep, I summoned some energy to greet him from my swamp coated in mud and bleeding from my head and hands. As he seemed not to notice the mud, the blood or my two days of backbreaking weeding, I asked him what he thought of my efforts. “Yeah, good girl”.

You’d think I’d have learnt from the ‘Cappucino’ incident of 19 February 2007, but no!