While virtually the entire population of the city is glued to their tv screens, or the public outdoor event screens, or actually at the MCG as spectators or transfixed by the action in sports bars and pubs all over town; anxiously awaiting the outcome of the gladiatorial battle between St Kilda and Collingwood; while the entire population holds its breath in one great collective gasp; while hundreds of thousands of dollars change hands in accord with tribal loyalties and friendships are made or broken on the result, what will I be doing?
I will be doing the gardening.
Yes, it's true. I don't care for football. I am the unsporty child who always had her nose in a book and was constantly rounded on by teachers urging me to "go out and get some sunshine". And me and my youthful skin thank heavens we never listened to that advice, because of course twenty-five years ago, no one wore hats or sunscreen, did they? No they did not. And now I look at some of my contemporaries, and I thank heavens again that I loved the library more than life itself. But I digress.
Grand Final Day in Melbourne, it's an annual ritual in which I don't participate. Instead, I will be drawing up square metre plots in my back garden and planting in the 240 thyme tubes I've ordered from Bulleen Art And Garden supplies.
Thyme, I hear you ask? Yes, thyme. We've had buffalo grass in our sorry little patch of lawn for the past four years, and no matter how much I wheedle, cajole, coax, nag or yell, My One True Love simply will not mow it. He doesn't do this out of spite or malice, it's just ... well, it's just something that never gets done when there is a long list of other more interesting or pressing things to do.
Consequently, the backyard always looks like the yard of a crazy person, and we frequently misplace the pussins in the jungle. When the cats started walking around the grass instead of walking through it, that's when I knew something needed to be done.
So we've ripped out the lawn (oh, my aching back) and prepared the soil, and now we're ready to plant in a herb lawn instead. Thyme is a lovely groundcover that will never need mowing, thrives in tricky soils like our clay-and-rock mix, smells lovely when you crush it underfoot, and I already know the pussins will like it because Fathead has previously loved to death a number of thyme plants in the herb garden by sitting on them.
Right, I can't spend any more time here, I must be off to Bunnings. Before and after shots will come soon!
