Practise What You Preach (Edward Vernon's Practice series Book 2) by Edward Vernon

Author:Edward Vernon [Vernon, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-10-12T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

The runner beans had begun to flower, the peas were in pod, the lettuces had been eaten and the radishes were but plump succulent memories. Margaret and I were well pleased with our gardening; there is something intensely satisfying about being able to eat food one has grown oneself. The doctor’s life, although rewarding in many ways, is never creative. The very best a doctor can hope for is to restore people to the health they enjoyed before. The general practitioner stands by the roadside as people trudge through life; it is his job to effect running repairs and, when possible, put the wounded and weary back on to the road. The magnificence and wonder of childbirth form a miracle which only very rarely owes much to medicine.

But turning tiny seeds into fully grown vegetables is, despite the inevitable support from God, a rewarding and pleasing occupation. There is, of course, a great deal of drudgery involved in looking after a garden of any size. Such tasks as weeding, mowing the lawn and clearing away leaves and dead flowers all take time and energy. On almost any weekend morning the sounds of water splashing on to the family saloon are almost drowned by the steady phut-phut of the motor mower and the irregular curses emanating from the gardener tending his roses. Roses never seem to understand that the hand which prunes and weeds is trying to be helpful.

The task I found most daunting, however, was the trimming of an enormous privet archway which stood in the centre of the garden and which had no appreciable practical function apart from acting as a shelter for a small white painted iron bench. I had put it off for several weeks, but eventually I could no longer ignore the fact that it was rapidly becoming bedraggled and untidy.

We had already purchased an electric hedge-trimmer and an immense length of cord. ‘It’s better to have too much than too little,’ Margaret had said as we struggled home with the reel. ‘There’s nothing worse than having a cord that’s just a foot too short.’

I remembered her comments as I ripped open the cord’s polythene package and allowed the contents to spill out on to the lawn. During the next few minutes I discovered just how malignant ordinary electric cable can be. As I carried the hedge trimmer to the archway the cord managed to sew itself into an extraordinary creation which, if worn by a model in Paris, would have been decried as far too enveloping.

After ten minutes or so spent attempting to disentangle it I decided to get on with trimming the privet. Unfortunately I found that even when standing on the bench I could not reach the top of the archway. I put down the trimmer, went to the garage and found a handsaw. I then started cutting out some of the branches at ground level, thinking that perhaps that would prove a suitable and sensible alternative to tidying the top of it.

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