Farmer Stan

An unexpected lay-off at work has meant that I've been in the unfamiliar environment of my own back garden. I am not a keen gardener, the whole subject bores me and at my age it's unlikely I'll ever reach even a basic level of knowledge.

Stan : "What shall I do with these ... er .. yellow guys ?"

Mrs. Stan (patiently) : "Buttercups"

Stan : "Right..."

My gardening experience tends to be somewhat unsubtle. My favourite tools are

(i) a crowbar - useful for dismembering old garden furniture and lifting paving slabs in a cathartic violent kind of way

(ii) a strimmer, as in the following example :-

Stan stands with a strimmer poised over a clump of something green in a flower bed.

Stan : "Weed or Flower ?"

Mrs. Stan : "Weed"

<Sound of Something Green being strimmed back to Ground Zero>

Strimmer moves on twelve inches.

Stan : "Weed or Flower ?"

Mrs. Stan : "Flower"

<Sound of a Flower being strimmed back to Ground Zero>

Stan : "Whoopsies!"

The penny has dropped recently however that gardening is not all poncy bushes with Latin names (I always thought Labia Majoris was something you'd see on "Gardeners' World").

No, the point I was missing was that you can eat some of this stuff ! Yummy potatoes and carrots for almost no money; no packaging, no V.A.T. The Research Labs at Stan Inc. are working through the night on ways to grow bacon, cheese and beer, but until those breakthroughs happen, I'm more than happy to settle for some root veg.


*****

Only one episode of "Mad Men" left - about time I did that review ...