The summer sun is here in earnest, and this brings with it something I despise: Gardening. I loathe gardening. I hate having to mow the lawn. It’s a chore I can seriously do without.

I don’t know why. It’s not difficult, and to be fair, it doesn’t take up a huge amount of time. I think it’s more down to how it does occupy an amount of time, time that I’d sooner use doing something other than gardening! Time is by far the most precious currency in life, so running around with the lawn-mower, snarling at the bloody thing as it seizes up for the umpteenth time, or having to carefully pick my way around a thorny bush, damages my calm.

In some ways, the increasing intensity of the summers means grass-cutting isn’t as frequent. The heat tends to wilt the grass. That said, after a couple of days of rain the garden explodes into life, and if left unchecked, it will become a mini jungle. In fact, we have neighbours who have allowed their front garden to become extremely overgrown, to a level where even my wish to be lazy would be overridden by a sense of embarrassment. The grass is fast approaching waist height, and a blackberry bush on the corner of their property (I guess there’s some ambiguity as to whether that’s theirs or the local council’s) has erupted with thorny vines. Those vines are now growing out over a public path, and are fast developing into a hazard.

I’d never let my garden reach such a disbelieved level. However, any gardening work I undertake is undertaken begrudgingly. I don’t enjoy it, I never will, and it will forever be a necessary evil at best to me.