A Gift Horse

Morning came. I was alone in bed. Where could she be I wondered? I heard the sound of crockery scrapping and water splashing. She is doing dishes, already! This will mean that I have to tidy up the house then, else it will seem as if she has done all the chores and I will just be the lazy boyfriend who lies in bed until way after the sun has come up just a week after I have moved in only. So then I pull myself out the bed only to find that the computer has been tidied away and so have my clothes, books and shoes. Damn!

But alas, the front yard is a right mess. The weeds have taken over from the last half hearted attempt at gardening 6 months ago, the herbs are parched and there is paper and plastic lying about, blown in from the street. It could take all day to sort out the front yard. But that is exactly what I need. An insurmountable task to which I can martar myself. Just a few months ago, however, me simply squating to remove a weed would earn me heaps of praise, for then I could be the boyfriend who sometimes helps out in the yard (wow!). But now that I live here, simply pulling out a weed will not do. More is expected. I need to make an impact. In fact, what is needed is systematic garden reform, if not a whole horticultural revolution.

And so, right then and there, in my boxers and t-shirt, to the background sound of crockery splashing in soapy water, I began to pull weeds out the soil. A most satisfactory task, I must say. I simply hold the leaves and stalk of the weed at the base and tug whence the plant gives and out comes a length of root as long as the weed was tall. Not the same in my home country. There, you can’t pull a weed out for beer or money. I would sooner yank out copper ore, as some people continue to do to this day. But still, with all this pulling of weeds out my girlfriends front yard, I was not making much of an impression as a whole. You see, I was want to pull out the most outlandishly brazen and haughty of weeds first. By this I mean my eye would catch the sight of a coterie of tall and well  formed weeds and I’ll be determined to yank them all out. But before I would be halfway through with that patch would I see another insurrection of weeds over my shoulder and proceed to them to yank them out. And so on I went, in circles about the garden, without actually getting much done. This besides the raking, sweeping and watering to be done.

An hour later, as I began to flounder at the enormity of the task came Gift. A small man with the body of a boy except for his beard. “Boss, have you got any small job for me”. In my boxers and t-shirt, I quickly put on my I-am-sorry-I-have-no-money-or-job-for-you face. But then his gaze turned to take in the spectacle around me. A sparcle came to his eye. “I can do this garden for you nice boss. I remove the leaves and weeds, move the flowers, put the grass, make the whole thing nice for you boss”. Sweat streaming down my face and the garden faring no better after an hours work I relented. “How much do you want for it?” I replied.

And so it was then that the girlfriend returned from some errand in her shiny car to find that I had hired a man to do my chores for me. She was kind and said “I was just thinking the same thing”. I still had a card to play, however. I made a full English breakfast, with frieds eggs, bacon and all. But then as we ate there was Gift sweating in the sun in full view to us through the window. So I had to make breakfast for him too.