A terrible incident behind the greenhouse
Gardening is all fun and games until you find a body
The Wiltshire Pantry is a happy, make-the-best-of-things place where double portions are served knowing full well pudding waits in the wings, where ugly rooms there’s no budget to transform are merrily revived with tile paint and a few jazzy accessories, and where failed flowers feed the composter and we sow some more seeds. But sometimes nature is a cruel mistress and it’s hard to see the sunny side. Sometimes, you’ve just got to share a sickening scenario to make yourself feel better, screw any delicate souls who might be reading…
Yesterday, after a trying Father’s Day spent preparing and cooking (this slow-roast lamb recipe is excellent) from 6am and then entertaining a tantrum-prone toddler (not mine) while also managing an anxious dog (mine) that would like to nip said toddler into silence as daddy dearest et al scoffed and sipped for 6+ hours, I was very much looking forward to retreating to my greenhouse to watch my stress trickle away with the watering of sage shoots and pruning of tomato plants. I’m decompressing just typing that, and I know what comes next!
So, post ‘celebration’, I trundled around the back of the greenhouse to one of the lesser-used water butts, watering can in hand. I don’t use this water butt as much as the others because the nozzle is in an odd place that means I have to curve my body around the whole thing and reach down to the ground with my face hovering almost inside the large plastic bin the previous owners left and I still haven’t moved. Because it had rained in the afternoon, this bin was nearly full and with my nose so close to the murky liquid, it was impossible not to recoil at the smell. As if rain water, from the same day, could reek so badly, I mused. And then I looked properly
at the large, soft bobbing mass of something, I wasn’t - am still not - sure what, but absolutely something that was once alive. I can’t un-see it’s slicked fur (maybe feathers?) and protruding chest (or side, or bottom, it wasn’t clear), so I guess it’s silly that I won’t bring myself to go back out there and look again, to determine what exactly met a watery death in what was once my happy place. RIP creature, RIP ever going behind the greenhouse again.
A worse-still side note: I’m not 100% confident this doomed thing arrived in the last 24 hours. Perhaps it’s been at the bottom of that horrible bin for some time and all the rain has pushed it to the surface. It matters, dear reader, because I’ve been submerging soil-y plant pots into the dregs of it WITH MY BARE HANDS for WEEKS, to give them a little refresh. And yeah, maybe I rinsed by hands after, but did I employ any care or soap? Probably not, it’s only rain water! *Dry heave*
I know inaction is not the answer: I’m worried about the odour attracting rats and bigger birds (but also half hopeful they’ll take the bloated evidence away?), I’m worried it’s a domestic animal and someone is missing it (a stretch, I think, but still #theanxiety), and I’m especially stressed that while the vessel remains unlidded, something else could get in there and drown. But surely most creatures could climb or fly out? It has to be a rat, or a bird that was already, um, already dead? Right, right!? Mostly though, selfishly, I’m worried about the influx of mental images I’ll have to endure on a loop if I have to touch it *sicky face* and witness it’s presumably sweet, shocked eyes. Also, did I mention THE SMELL.
And so, at the grand age of 33 and as a recent owner of my own countryside garden (have I mentioned I’ve moved to rural Wiltshire, guys?), having very recently exclaimed that I could live off the land and am now ‘one with nature’, that I finally feel like an adult, self-sufficient even, and because Father’s Day is just one day and that day has been and gone, my dad is coming round to deal with it.
Here’s hoping he does so before bin day or he’ll have to take the carrier bag coffin home with him…