The Gangster Gardener is getting down and dirty.
In his online Masterclass, he teaches the importance of soil to grow our food in, talking passionately and eloquently about how we can regain power by growing food ourselves, and how we fail our children by not teaching this in schools. He recounts the story of Bambi, who dies and goes back into the ground. He commends the value of worms. He makes the point that our understanding of nature’s cyclical balance has perished. That people disrespectfully now call it ‘dirt’, not soil, shows how lost we have become. For good soil one needs good compost. Sawdust, coffee grounds, egg shells, and hair are listed as some great things to make compost. I don’t have sawdust, but D drinks tons of Colombian roast, so we are off to a good start.
I make brunch with a dozen eggs, and set aside the shells. After we have cleared and washed up, I feed the dog, then take her outside for a long brush. Anyone with a long haired retriever knows that brushing the dog is no brief feat. ClumsyCat tries to join in, so I find myself with one brush in each hand, brushing two animal coats simultaneously, whilst my salon clients position themselves strategically, so that I may get the itchy patch.
Armed with newly acquired key ingredients of hair, eggshells and coffee, I venture into the garden to start my compost pile. The part of the garden that needs most attention is the section where we buried our dead pets. It wasn’t ever an intention to build a Pet Cemetery. Too creepy for my taste. Too Stephen-King-eerie. It all started with scattering the ashes of A’s first cat, Bo, when A was young enough to still have long ringlets that got wet when she cried her broken little heart out. A year later, we had four hamsters, (don’t ask,) who passed in rapid succession that each needed a tidy burial. Time passed, then six years and three months ago, my first dog Tiki died, after fourteen happy years of chasing coconuts and tennis balls, along the beach and Green Park respectively. D and I built her a coffin, lined with pink silk, and buried her under a ponytail palm tree. Anything less would have done her a disservice. One year later, B’s cat, Lightning, unfortunately ran under a van after hearing the news that B had been accepted into boarding school. I know how the cat felt. Then during B’s summer of GCSE exams, his second cat, Timmy, met the same sad end. So now it’s a haphazardly planted memorial garden, with little mounds of rocks, carved stones, and interspersed plants. As I am recalling all the sweet memories of the little lost souls, I plant ten baby lilies grown from bulbs that have sprouted these past few weeks, around the little graves. I dig out the holes in the loamy earth, when ClumsyCat chooses a hole next to Lightning, as if to say ‘Save me this spot will you?’
“No” I reply. “I’ll need you around for quite a bit longer.”
D&I go for a bike ride. It’s all waves and smiles between us and the gay gentlemen as they pass. We have developed that familiarity of knowing we’ll see each other at the same time and same place every day, but we don’t know each other’s names, and now if one of us stopped to ask it would be wierd. Tonight they play Bowie’s “Space Odyssey” on their speaker. One day I will stop them, I decide, to ask for their playlist.
D and I are finishing dinner when ClumsyCat mews to go outside.
“Okay, but stay clear of the road” I warn her. But I guess we will all end up back in the cyclical food chain one of these days.
