Guest blogger - Merry Christmas from the Gardener

Christmas is very much a time for reflection, and of course for bathing ones hands in antiseptic after cutting the holly for the Christmas decorations for the Big House and feeling smug about making a small fortune flogging mistletoe to the florist in the village. Most people think that, with the entire estate buried under six inches of snow, the work of the Gardener in winter mostly consists of keeping a very low profile, sitting in the potting shed with the paraffin heater on full blast, smoking a pipe filled with the more socially unacceptable sort of tobacco, drinking home brew and browsing pornography.

And indeed I can assure you that at this time of year, that’s exactly how I would spend my time if I had the choice. Some folk associate the smell of roast turkey with the Yule season, some the smell of Christmas pudding, but for me the smell of midwinter is a pungent mix of loam, shag, heating oil and parsnip wine (which can substitute for heating oil in an emergency).

The reality is somewhat different. The plants may be sleeping but nature is positively insomniac and this is the time of year when the Gardener, with time on his hands, is able to address certain matters.

Foxes, mostly.

By the time the gentry in the Boxing Day hunt have finished crashing through every hedge and fence in the county in pursuit of a single fox, commoners lacking horses but possessed of common sense pack a sturdy shovel, and follow the paw prints to track the little buggers down.

Foxes are not the only pests abroad in the deep midwinter. There’s badgers, stoats, weasles and so on. In fact most of the cast of ‘Wind in the Willows’ are out and about, except they don’t all wander around being fey, wearing waistcoats and generally acting like Edwardian toffs, unless the upper classes of that bygone era made a habit of crapping in the flower beds, digging up the bulbs and savaging raw chickens.

Pest control comes in all forms and, as Gardener, it’s my role to ensure that any pests are dealt with before they get to the Big House, especially since the Squire has developed the habit of keeping a loaded shotgun next to his drinks cabinet. Many a peaceful evening has been disrupted by the roar of both barrels being discharged through a hopefully open window and a cry of ‘got the bugger!’ addressed at whatever creature has just been vaporised in a cloud of the Squire’s bespoke shot mix of lead and depleted uranium. Of course, as the level of scotch drops through the night, the man’s aim and judgement do become a little erratic; I believe that the tally for this year is five foxes, two badgers, a nephew who was returning late from a party (only winged him), a rather charming terracotta pot (vaporised) and several branches of a nearby chestnut tree that were ‘waving suspiciously’ in the wind last September.

So it’s important that menaces such as ramblers, carol singers and gypsies are all deterred from making it within gravel scrunching range of the Big House.

And of course, this time of year gives a chap time to reflect and to plan for the future. Or more accurately, to plot the humiliation and ultimately the destruction of ones rivals; in my case the gardener at The Grange who last year pipped me at the post for first prize in the Most Humorous Looking Vegetable class at the village show. This was done, if my suspicions are correct, through the illegal use of a forcing mould (no beetroot would ever grow in that shape, not even nature at its most perverted would permit such a thing) and an application of rohypnol to the judge’s tea.

Of course, the owner of The Grange is a relative newcomer to the village, having won a fortune on the lottery they have decided to live the life of country gentry. In encouraging their staff to stoop to underhand methods to achieve something as petty as a prize in the village show, they have already demonstrated a natural aptitude for embracing country ways that normally takes generations to achieve.

Merry Christmas