NewsFlashMedia: Gardening therapy

What would you love to do when someone annoys you first thing on New Year’s Day? Smack them on the head? I was very tempted but I have promised myself 2011 is my year and it will be filled with positive vibes ONLY! So, what did I do instead of replying the sms with an equally annoying text? I went for “retail” therapy. I bought PLANTS!

I ignored the sms, picked up my car keys and zoomed my way to the nearby nurseries. The planned 1-hour trip became a four-hour therapy session instead and did I have fun!

These are my precious trees that provide shade in my backyard.

First off, most of the nurseries were quiet, it being the first day of the New Year and people are mostly still in bed suffering a hangover I guess. So I had all the attention from the foreign workers working at the nurseries who were mostly basking under the sun wearing their straw hats to give them shade.

Most of them know me as I am a frequent customer at all the stalls but it got a little scary when one of the workers kept grinning at me with an almost sadistic smile. That particular nursery lost a customer that day.

I decided to buy a matured Pandanus plant that costs me RM10 as all my previous attempts to grow one failed miserably.

By the end of the 4-hour marathon I lugged home some earthenware pots, bags of burned soil for potting my plants, some pot legs, hangers and at least six different varieties of plants.

It’s been back-breaking work the last two days, re-potting some of my plants, re-arranging the pots in the backyard and front yard and checking the plants – pruning, feeding them fertilisers and cutting off excess roots.

A very messy lanai and coffee table once I start working on the garden, which is to the right.

But the most embarrassing thing about gardening in a condo unit is when hell breaks lose every time I come across a garden slug. I tell you darling, my screams are so piercing that they can reach the 18^th floor of my tower block, travel across to the three other facing blocks and can easily cause fatality to anyone with a weak heart!

In fact, I don’t even need salt to kill these slugs. My screams do the job just fine.

The other “bad” thing about gardening in a condo unit is that your neighbours (the ones above you especially) hear everything you say to yourself in the garden. I was trying hard to get one of my overgrown ferns out of its present pot so I can move her (yes, I know if my plants is a him or her) to a bigger “house”.

The smaller plants are easier to re-pot as they don't take too much energy.

But her roots were massive and not wanting to damage them I had to go real slow. It was a killer. So I was groaning so loud on top of my iPod (listening to music, of course) like “URGHHHH…come on baby, come out, pleassseee…”. Then there was the “GOD! You’re so huge!!!” line. And I guess by the time I got to the: “Please don’t kill me man. This is crazy. This is hard!” some of the foreign students living several floors above me must have been hyperventilating, not knowing it was just a mad gardener at work several floors below.

Fun aside, the past two days has been rather hot so I’ve been sweating like a pig under the sun in my garden. There’s a bit more to go but it’s raining at the moment. So I will get back to work once the rain subsides.

Meanwhile, take a look at some of these images. There’s one photo of me digging into an incredibly delicious red watermelon, another photo of me re-potting a smaller plant, a Jasmine, my backyard and a very messy lanai with the coffee table turned in to a workstation.