This column has been cobbled together at, if not past, the eleventh hour. I do have a tendency to leave things to the last minute (I like to think of it not so much as a bad habit, but as an adherence to 'tradition' since it is the routine I employed when doing my homework at school) but even by my standards this has been a close one. In fact for one reason or another, none of which are terribly cogent, I haven't felt at all inspired this week, and absolutely nothing has suggested itself as an appropriate topic. Well, that's not quite true - a few ideas floated briefly across the surface of my mind, but there was absolutely no spark there, no thought of what I could actually write. I don't make any claims to be a great writer (I can't really, I've read my stuff) but if I can't work in a few flowery turns of phrase that at least please me, then I give it up. So all in all, I very nearly ended up sending Lissa an email from my Mum, along the lines that "Andrew can't write a column this week, as he hasn't been very well." That isn't true, obviously, and anyway there's no obligation to inflict a column on the Vervoid every week - but I like to at least try and keep it up. Erm, bad choice of words - I like to keep myself regular. Erm... Well anyway you know what I mean. Mind you, bearing in mind the blog's observations this week about young people and illness I probably wouldn't have got away with a note from my Mum anyway.

However, late this afternoon a few vagaries did cross my mind. When I can find some way of working in a few flowery turns of phrase on the subject I may well ramble in detail about how I don't like all this Sunny weather (flies, fleas, squinting and sweating, are just a few of the things I shall be employing in the case for the prosecution); but for now suffice it to say that it was because of the Summer sunshine that I found myself out in the garden this afternoon.

I have to be honest and say that not only am I not keen on gardening, I actively dislike it. My mother-in-law loves it, which is unfortunate for a great many people not least of which is my father-in-law. Not that they aren't a devoted couple, but she views herself more in the visionary, supervisory role, with her other half supplying the actual labour. My daughter doesn't love gardening, but she does of course love her grandma and so plays along. This means that we quite often get packets of seeds, or pre-grown flowers given to us, because our daughter allegedly wants them.

In one sense our front garden is slowly becoming my mother-in-law's allotment; although rather wickedly it's also becoming a bit like a salad bar for our rabbits, as any plants not well-protected tend to have the flowers and leaves quickly nibbled off. My philosophy as regards plants is to apply the principals of evolution - which means that it is survival of the fittest out there. I'm quite happy for my mother-in-law to plant some flowers in our garden (or rather to get my father-in-law to do it, although she does tell him where to stick them. Erm...) but I can't necessarily guarantee their safety. If they live then fine; if not, well, that's just nature's way.

Like a shadow over my sardonic apathy towards Titchmarsh territory, however, is the very real possibility, the threat even, that one day I might actually grow to like it. My paternal grandfather was a very keen gardener in his retirement, and his garden was lovingly tended. The front was absolutely beautiful, and the back was well-employed for growing raspberries. The last time I was at Mum & Dad's house I noticed that Dad has now started to grow raspberries. Maybe it's some genetic thing; my only hope lies in the fact that I seem to have inherited Mum's washing gene, so simple fair-mindedness (yeah, like that's the basis on which the universe works!) would suggest that my brother should inherit the Curse of Gardening. Mind you he'll have a job, as his back yard is all concrete.

We, on the other hand, and much to my chagrin (ah-ha, another word off the list!) have grass front and back. During the Winter it behaves much like a student, by which I mean it just sort of lies around not doing very much, and although it may look a bit untidy it's best just to ignore it. But once we get into Spring and Summer the wretched stuff starts to grow. And what, pray tell me, could be a more tedious task than cutting the grass?! I used to work with a chap who was rather old-fashioned in that he viewed cooking, washing, cleaning as woman's work, and painting, tiling, mowing as man's work. But what exactly is the difference, other than the location, between hoovering and cutting the grass? Both involve pushing a machine to and fro across an area until it looks tidy, and both end with the rather depressing thought that you'll need to do it again in a week's time!

One of the clauses of our council house tenancy is that the garden should be kept in a reasonable condition, and so I regularly but reluctantly cut the front grass during the sunny months. I had hoped that my wife & daughter's army of animals, in particular the rabbits, might be able to keep it in check simply by eating it, but unfortunately not, although they have given us a couple of bald-patches which at least reduces the workload. However, the back garden is not 'on show' to anything like the same extent as the front - only our immediate neighbours can see it, and to be honest our relationship with them probably requires a column, or sitcom, or documentary, all its own; and so the state of our back lawn is comparatively unimportant. Our back garden is rather like my hair in fact, in that I tend to leave it to grow how the fancy takes it until it needs to be taken in hand (or until my wife tells me it needs cutting).

I actually cut the back grass on Wednesday evening, and at the time there was no suggestion that I could produce any flowery prose out of it, so I mowed, raked and forgot about it. I was reminded of it today however when I found myself once again out back, this time working on the hedge. The back garden adjoins a field (well this is rural Devon, you do get the occasional field here and there) and this dividing hedge is mainly composed of brambles and foxgloves. For the past few years, by which I mean ever since we moved in back in July 1999, we have left the hedge to grow each year, but it has now reached, or in fact probably passed, the point where it needs to have something done to it. Nothing too drastic, but certainly it looked in need of a bit of trimming and tidying. So armed with a pair of scissors (I don't say scissors because I don't know how to spell sequiteurs but because it really was just a pair of scissors - I don't 'do' gardening, remember, and thus am without some of the specialist equipment) I set to on the hedge at the bottom of the garden.

Of course, rather like an onion, the more I removed the more I found. And not just brambles either. Somewhere around the cretaceous layer we uncovered some plucky honeysuckle, a mini-forest of very tall stinging-nettles, even a putative oak tree. The oak tree has been left, as have some of the healthier-looking brambles (and by healthier-looking I actually mean the ones that are alive; bearing in mind this hedge hasn't been touched for at least five years, there was an awful lot of dead branches in there). But the rest has been removed.

And it's not just a matter of cutting them down is it, because they then need to be picked up and bagged for disposal. At the age of ten I could have told you exactly how much a stinging-nettle hurts, and not just because of the famous incident where my brother shoved me into a whole clump (well, it's not really a famous incident as such, but I like to make sure he never forgets it). But rather surprisingly I have forgotten that particular nugget of information over the past two decades, or at least I had until this afternoon. At the moment my hands are red and tingly, from the heady cocktail of nettle stings and bramble scratches. Somehow no matter how hard you try, or how carefully you pick at them, the brambles always, always scratch you to buggery. Those darned thorns are a wonder of nature on a parallel with the gerbils eating their young.

So there it is. It's only May now, and already I have four bin bags full of culled brambles and nettles and grass. The view out over the back garden is now looking much more attractive; but the view over the next few months is looking particularly bleak. The lawns at Curnow towers may be short, short at the moment. But even as I write this I know that they are out there growing again.....