How to look after your garden - a short story by Phil

Well, as you can imagine, when I found it in the garden my first feeling was one of dread.  No, not dread – rather that kind of intense concern that comes with a little more knowledge than you wanted, combined with a sinking nervousness about the implications.  Or a sickening feeling of something awful that you can’t get out of, like a bad invite.  There it was, growing up under the fence between our garden and the neighbours’.  I cursed them for letting it grow in their garden; I irrationally cursed the plant itself and those thoughtless entrepreneurs who imported it as some exotic curiosity so many years ago.

Of course, when I told my husband he was hysterical.

“There’s Japanese knotweed in the garden.”

His lips drew together like I’d pulled a drawstring.

He began: “Those bloody neighbours… this is what happens when you don’t care for your property… totally oblivious people…”

He went out into the garden and examined the knotweed.  He was grumbling furiously about the integrity of foundations, house prices, herbicides and even community spirit.  Childishly, a fleeting thought came: could I persuade him with dichotomous keys and arcane diagrams that it was not Japanese knotweed?  Convince him that it would go away easily, with a little light weeding?  It was the same impulse that makes me put the kettle on during the TV news sometimes, or skip over the ‘world’ section of the newspaper.  I’ve never gambled, but I imagine that moment when a crucial bet loses was like this; a fervent wish that you could just rewind to a time before you knew.  Not for my sake, but for his.

My husband has always felt so burdened by his life.  Looking back now, it seems this was the straw that broke his long-yoked back. 

“It could cost THOUSANDS to get rid it professionally,” he said, almost masochistically.  “Or take YEARS to sort it out if we do it ourselves.”

“Years we have,” I tried to say soothingly.  “We are retiring soon.”

I should have worked harder to persuade him towards the latter option.  Maybe I could have talked him out of the apocalyptic pit in the garden that we finished with.  Only, this floral incursion seemed to constitute just one too many responsibilities for a man who felt his life had been dominated by responsibilities.  This was one he could see a way to dodge.  Not like school, training, work, more training, children, more work, children whose demands rose exponentially with age.  Not so long ago, it was the weddings.  So many demands and duties, with so little grace.  I suspect my husband felt as though his responsibilities got in the way of living, as if a job and a family were so many obstacles before a more real kind of existence.  What his life would entail without these trappings, I have no idea.  He has hobbies, but no burning passions that might have dominated.  I wonder if he would simply have a different family, a different career.

For me, I take these things to be my life, the two major currents in the river.  I can’t step into the same river twice any more than I can step out of it.  I think my husband sees himself as being borne along, with little resistance.  The knotweed was just another current, outside of his control, taking him to an identity he doesn’t want to reach.

*

My wife tried to be circumspect about the possibility of a parasitic invasion in the garden.

“A plant’s growing up under the fence,” she said.  “I think its Japanese knotweed.”  Have you heard of this stuff?  It can tear down buildings, pretty much.  My wife is an animal behaviourist, and this seems to make her think that she understands all of nature.  She ascribes it more order, thinks it more comprehensible, than it is.  Really, we were getting screwed by this plant.  It’s hard not to see malice there.

My wife seemed panicked about the costs and timescales involved.  Although I’ve always been careful with money, I determined that we needed the professionals in to deal with it.  Why spend years worrying about it, devoting near-constant attention to some foreign species, when you could just turf it all out, in one go?  Turf it out they did – sure, they left a big hole but you can’t take any chances with this knotweed.  They also had to remove my wife’s rose bushes, but still, as I told my wife, sometimes you just have to grab the bull by the horns.

Oftentimes, she is too passive about these sorts of things.  You need to be in charge of your own life, the master of your own destiny and all that.  I think I’ve been able to do that: I married the woman I loved, got a worthwhile job, raised children well.  Of course, you can’t help it when other people make bad decisions around you, like the neighbours with their garden maintenance.  Or my daughter with that husband.  My wife prefers some kind of ‘go with the flow’-type philosophy.

I think that’s weak of her.