I have never been a fan of gardening, unless of course, that means sitting in a patio with a glass of wine tugging at stray pieces of grass! This is why, when I bought my house the gardens featured quite heavily in the decision. Call it naive, but I assumed that the garden I saw when viewing the house, would be the same garden I would have when I moved in. It’s a simple mistake to make, you’d think that a garden would be a stationary thing, not something that would ‘move out’ when the seller moved house. I was wrong.

I thought I was moving into house that had a lovely cottage style rear garden, complete with flowers, shrubs and rustic garden bench. When I moved in the flowers had disappeared, the shrubs were gone and there wasn’t a bench in sight, rustic or otherwise. What I did have was a large expanse of bare earth, a drain cover and some broken tubs and containers. I was not amused. Rather than having a wonderfully colourful and fragrant outside space to relax in, I was looking at an eyesore.

I have tried many times to try and get the garden to look pretty, I have dug, weeded, planted, watered and done all of things that I am supposed to do but all that grows are weeds, I can’t even identify them, no one can tell me what they are, but boy are they rampant. They have strangled everything I have tried to grow, they practically grow overnight and they are a haven for snails, slugs and all manner of horrid squirmy things.

The snails are another issue, at certain times of the year, the windows at the rear of the house look like they have been used overnight as a race circuit, the garden path shines with a silvery lattice work and occasionally there is the sickening sound of shell crunching underfoot, it turns my stomach. But, the snails have had their uses.

I have a young son, who like any child accumulated a lot of different sized balls all over the garden. In another half hearted attempt to remove my unidentified fast growing plant life, I attacked the garden with some shiny new shears, only to get so far along before the sound of a puncture and the whoosh of escaping air was heard. I’d sliced right through his red ‘Postman Pat’ football, which had been completely hidden by large green leaves. Not knowing what to say, I tried to move the casualty without him seeing, but as eagle eyed as ever he spotted the remains and let out a cry of dismay. Thinking on her feet my teenage daughter jumped in and said ‘The snails did it!’ Sounds ridiculous, but at three years old, he believes it and still blames the snails for all of the balls that go missing. If you ask him, he will tell you that snails are nasty and like to bite footballs with their sharp teeth. Perhaps this will stop him from teasing girls with snails and slugs when he’s a little older, who knows? But for now, I still have an eyesore of a garden, but unlike many others, mine is inhabited by snails with sharp gnashing teeth.