garden unseen (by me)

The garden at work appeared on Gardeners' World a couple of weeks ago.  Unfortunately I didn't know it was on, and missed it.  Maybe I should give GW another go, now that Monty's back.  I gather that last week they covered the Gibbert Garden at Harlow, so they must have been on a little eastern counties tour.  I don't know if it was the direct effect of the TV feature, but visitor numbers have risen markedly since.

I don't often go around it myself.  Customers find this bizarre.  When asking for the name of something they've seen in the garden they try to describe it, and I have to admit I haven't seen it.  The trouble is, there isn't really time.  By lunchtime I've generally been on my feet for the best part of five hours.  I'm hungry, and I want a cup of tea, and to sit down on a chair, with a table to put my tea on.  If I wander down the garden the tea is cold by the time I sit down, and I'll probably have to sit on the ground.  Even though the surroundings are beautiful it's too uncomfortable.  I find it takes twenty minutes to eat lunch and drink the tea, which leaves ten minutes out of my half hour lunch break.  Five minutes there and five minutes back isn't going to get me very far into the garden.  Also, I want to get away from the customers for half an hour.  I'm generally quite happy with my role as Staff, but not while I'm eating my lunch.

In general I don't think looking at things against the clock works, whether it is trying to see the garden in the last few minutes of my break, or rushing around an art gallery in the half hour before it closes, or before the moment where I have to get back to Liverpool Street if I'm to beat the commuter period when cheap day returns are invalid.  To appreciate something properly is to immerse yourself in it, which means losing your sense of time.  It's no good if you have an eye on your watch.

The boss has said in the past that we're welcome to go around the garden after work, which is kindly meant, but by six I'm ready to go home.  I'm tired, and I've got my own watering to do when I get back.  And I want to see what's going on in my garden, and check my e-mails.  I could go over there on a day when I'm not working, but there are so many other things to do, I never seem to make the time.  They say the shoemaker's children are the worst shod.

At least when I get home I don't have to do the cooking.  Many households operate on the basis that things get done by the person who cares most about the outcome.  My partner does not share my cheerful conviction that tea, toast, cheese and fruit constitute a nourishing diet, and that meat more than once or twice a week is an optional extra, so I get home to a proper cooked meal.  With meat.  During Cheltenham week the nearest I got to animal protein was an anchovy.

The bits of the garden I can see over the plant centre wall do look very nice.