I don't know what gardening on the edge refers to, but gardening has certainly often set me off the edge.
One such occurrence took place only a few short weekends ago.
My wife and myself had hopped up early on the sunny Saturday morning, donned our gardening shoes, and then we had put on our gardening hats and gloves.
We spent quite an enjoyable morning together preparing a new garden bed in the front of our house. Digging the edges and borders and upturning the hard packed clay soil. We had first worked hard to remove the grass covering, and then after digging up the heavy clods of clay, we had added plenty of cow manure, gypsum, and another soil improver, plus a handful or two of a good organic fertiliser.
This was really a very good and productive morning's work, and we were both happy with the end result.
What sent me off the edge, was the following Saturday's follow-up session that was planned to take place within the same newly prepared and now ready to plant in garden bed.
Our intention was to plant the five small bushes that we had spent several hours browsing around a few nearby nurseries to carefully select. We had also bought two rather large bags of mulch to lay down on top of the soil to complete the job too our perfection.
Read here to my wife's perfection really.
She is so neat and methodical and has such a good eye for this type of task. I would have just started digging, but she had so carefully marked out the lines for us to dig into with an orange can of spray paint.
There is a funny little aside story here, because my wife comes from a different culture to mine, and she hadn't ever used spray paint before. Before I could stop her, she was looking down at the top of the can, and then she had without further thinking about it, pressed the trigger to test if it was working or not.
I guess she expected it to spray downwards somehow, and not upwards. But you have to actually turn the can upside down to achieve this.
Unfortunately for her though it was all working most perfectly.
She had now sprayed marking paint onto her face, her nose, her hair, and some had even gone into her eyes. There was not enough to seriously cause any real problems though. After cleaning up inside with some water and face towels, she was soon back outside to help me once more again with the heavy work of removing the dug out grass clumps.
Anyways, this next following Saturday morning was even hotter than the previous weekend's had been. We were approaching the hot dry summer season that we experience getting hotter and hotter every year now, here in Australia.
We both quickly realised that we would be needing our hats.
My wife said to be then something like this,
''You were the one to put them away, dear. Go get them for me. I suspect you put them in the shed, or maybe in the garage, didn't you?''
Now, I am getting a little bit old and forgetful, and I already know the wisdom of not immediately contradicting my wife, in these matters. She is almost invariably right, and me wrong in the end, whenever I do this.
I scratched my head, and I wiped my by now profusely sweating brow a bit. This is how men get their fuddled brains into gear. They need some type of a lever to pry out their memories, well at least I do.
Then I remembered that I had actually left the hats on the old barbecue under the pergola at the back of our house, and well out of the rain in that position, in case if it had rained.
Feeling rather pleased with myself, I now walked quickly around to the rear of our house, leaving my wife in the front yard with the plants still to be planted.
Reaching the barbecue, I could see rather quickly that the hats in question where no longer there.
Feeling a bit disappointed by this, I went back around the front again now, and so I then asked my wife if she had taken the hats from the barbecue, and if she had placed them somewhere else.
She looked up at me from her kneeling position on the garden bed, as she replied again to me and sounding now a bit irritated and annoyed in her tone of voice. I could always pick the added emphasis and reflections of annoyance that were added into her voice and gesticulations, and I would usually take cover quickly.
''Well dear, I gave them to you to put away. Where did you put them? Go and have another look, and this time look properly. Are you getting Alzheimer's disease, or something,''
she had added rather sarcastically, and just a bit softer, but nevertheless loud enough for me to still be able to hear what she had just said.
I went back around the back of the house, as I was not really wanting to upset her anymore. I was also starting to back down by admitting to myself that it was true that perhaps my memory was not so good at times. And so I was determined this time to find those missing hats and prove that I was not going senile just yet. There was still some grass in my top paddock as we Australians would say here.
I spent a good twenty minutes in the small garden shed now, before spending another thirty minutes after that in the garage looking for these missing garden hats.
I was getting very hot and bothered by this time. I was feeling frustrated and about ready to give up the search altogether.
It was about then that my wife appeared at the garage door, and she said to me then.
''What are you doing around here? You have been gone for over an hour. The planting is all finished, and the mulch is all spread. Don't tell me that you are still looking for the hats?''
I replied hesitatingly, and faltering a bit in my reply, not wanting to appear too much of a fool, for spending that much time looking for garden hats that I myself had stored away, well according to her anyway.
''Dear, are you sure that I was the one to put our hats away? I can't seem to find them anywhere at all?''
She retorted gruffly,
''Get real Jim. (name changed) What on earth is the matter with you? Where did you put the blue bag?''
By now I was already not thinking too clearly at all, being flustered from spending so much time looking in the small clustered hot atmosphere of the tightly packed little garden shed, and then more time still in the steamy equally hot garage. It was indeed already a very hot and humid day, but at least I had been in the shade. My wife had just spent an hour under the blistering sun's intensive searing heat, and without even a hat on her head.
No wonder her mood also matched, and then quickly overtook my own.
I was really confused now.
What blue bag is she talking about? What has a blue bag got to do with anything anyway, I had then thought to myself?
And so I gingerly now asked her,
''What blue bag do you mean, deary?"
At least in our relationship, even when we are annoyed with each other, we still use pleasant sounding endearments such as this towards each other. The underlying deeper love is always still there, despite the surface waves crashing over us only for now.
She said,
''The blue cloth shopping bag. I asked you to put it away''
I responded again still not knowing where we were going with this conversation, but sort of knowing intuitively that it had something to do with the mystery of the disappearing hats.
And so I said to her quietly,
''Well dear, I put it away again into my car, so it will be there next time we go shopping, and when we again forget to take a bag along with us.''
With the trend towards the environment and recycling, plastic carry bags are largely a thing of the past in our small home town. The long arms of the Government's reforms has even impacted on our small town and its stores.
My wife then played her ace card.
She told me then that the hats were inside the blue bag. Surely I would have noticed the extra weight and bulk she added dryly, when I had placed the blue bag away into my car.
Of course I had not noticed, and I had had no idea at all in my head that the blue bag had contained something extra inside of it.
She was smugly satisfied. I had been proved wrong once again. It was me after all that had put the hats away, without even knowing that I had done so.
Of course even until now, I have still not been game enough to as yet enquire why on earth she would ever want to put our gardening hats into our blue shopping bag, while knowing full well that I would place it back in my car for use on another shopping day.
At least the hats were found at last, even though we had both been taken to the very edge of our own sanity to finally crack the mystery wide enough open to see the right answer staring at me until I was blue in the face to match her still to be noticed hints of orange paint still on the fronds of her hair.
I will perhaps finish this article by adding an insight or two about what was really going on here, and the lessons to be learnt.
Love lets down its shades even as the sun keeps shining. Never allow outside heat to overheat the inner soft waters of your heart. Blues should not be allowed to escalate into black and blues, and so laugh at your mistakes as much as you can live with less than perfect communication in your life at some times. Clarifying issues first avoids future pain. Be humble enough to let others see that you are sometimes forgetfully foolish without needing to waste too much time to prove it to them also.