The Export Gardener by Richard Harrison

Author:Richard Harrison
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2015-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The ultimate upper body workout

The entrance to Montreal Road looked just like any other on the Sevenoaks landscape, tucked away as it was, just beyond the roundabout at Riverhead. Yet the road itself was once a very grand driveway that led to a magnificent stately home. No remnants of the old mansion remained but judging by the size of the Oak trees that lined the street it must have been quite something in its day.

Once the original house had been demolished, the grounds were redeveloped as a residential estate. Dozens of two storey houses were built on large blocks, all in the same style and all bordered by Beech hedges. Curiously, every single property in Montreal Road had a name. God forbid that its residents would have to tolerate anything so common as numbers.

Mr Dorban lived at ‘Hill Stone.’ He had been referred by a friend and needed someone to trim the hedge at the front of his property, as ‘the fellow who normally does it has hurt his shoulder.’

Apparently it was ‘that time of year again’ when the hedges had to be trimmed and Mr Dorban suggested that if I could make a good fist of it, his friend and neighbour across the street would be interested in having his done as well.

I hadn’t tackled a Beech hedge before and I wasn’t too sure just how far back it should be cut, so I set about it slowly and carefully. As it happens, Mr Dorban turned out to be a pretty good coach. At one point he took hold of the hedge trimmer and ran a couple of swipes for me, expertly angling the blades to achieve a neater, smoother finish than I had been able to achieve to that point.

It took me three goes but it eventually passed inspection and a couple of days later I was giving the hedges at ‘Cawdries’ a similar treatment across the road.

By the time I completed that job, I had been asked to quote two others.

I had plenty of other work booked in and was having trouble getting out of Montreal Road at all, as each job I secured seemed to lead to another. I dealt with Mrs McIntyre at ‘Bend Oak’ and spent an entire day working for Stewart McLaren at ‘Sandmount West,’ before Mr Todd from ‘The Robyns’ asked me to trim all of his hedges - front, back and sides.

Having seen and trimmed enough hedges to last a lifetime, my interest and enthusiasm was fading and I am the first to admit that I didn’t do a particularly good job at ‘The Robyns’ - at least not the first time around anyway. I finished the hedges, shoved an invoice through the door and took a call from Mr Todd that night. He wasn’t happy with the job I had done and asked me to come back and finish it off before he would pay me. I was tired, angry and thought my arms were about to fall off but I returned early the next day, insisting there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.