I return home tonight to find the garden untouched, but I haven’t been in more than a couple of minutes before I hear the sound of a petrol hedge-cutter being reved up.
S comes round for a DVD and pizza (sitting awkwardly due to a strained back) and we watch things progress.
Two and a half hours later, M has cut back the overgrown shrubbery, grass and shoots to the side garden, trimmed back the shrubbery that lines the front fence, cut the grass and trimmed back some of the garden shrubs (a little more than needed in some cases, but hey-ho).
As I make him a cup of tea, he remarks, that in the period when he kept knocking on and missing me, he’d also brought me round some rosehip tea which he finds great for the throat. How nice is that?
So with the scope of work extended and a generally good job done (not exactly finesse if you know what I mean, but...), I triple the original ‘fee’, and refuse his attempt to insist on giving change.
He’s going to clear up some of the cuttings that wouldn’t fit in the wheelie bin in coming days and then we’ll talk about future work.
Bizarrely I think I’ve found myself a gardener.
It feels ridiculously decadent to employ ‘help’, but hey if he can do the boring trimming jobs every month or two, leaving me to concentrate on the finer elements of garden care, then I think it might just work. I think I’d rather pay out and have the time (even with the associated guilt of a one–generation from working class mindest).
1 comment:
Don't feel guilty! Just think what the employment and money mean to him! Why is it we give money to charity and yet feel guilty at paying someone for their skills and abilities????? Go on, you'll be employing a cleaner next!!
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