Again, why do I need a garden? Vacate my shed!
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 17, 2012
Again, why do you need a garden?
Virginia Woolf wrote that most women need a room of one’s own. Men want a shed of their own.
The need of women for a room is theoretical most of the time: They do feel guilty if they are not busy all the time. Women feel that they have to be doing the dishes, vacuuming, sweeping, washing walls, doing laundry, redesigning every corner, changing curtains, experimenting with new cuisine…
Men want a garden! Actually, what they have in mind is a shed of their own. The excellent excuse is to store hoes, wheelbarrows, gro-bags, repairing tools…Women agree gladly: They want all that stuff stached and hidden away, and the garden looking clean for visitors…
What is better than erecting a shed?
A large shed, the bigger the better, with a large window to scrutinize the vast horizon…
The man builds his shed, stack all the gardening rubbish in a “hidden corner” of the garden among the thorn and wild grass to discourage the wife from investigating…The maintenance tools are well-organized in the shed: This is the domain of the do-it-all repairman…
The shed must accommodate a small refrigerator (you know what for), a kettle, a mini-bar, a chair, a desk, and also a long chair…
An early warning alarm system is a priority: anyone coming close to the shed, and the warning system will allow the necessary time to dump the daily newspaper, the beer cans, the buscuits…into the clean garbage can…No see, no worries…
The man strikes a deal with second-hand furniture stores. Not to buy anything, but to rent a few used furniture to give the illusion of refurbishing, painting, repolishing…and then returning them for a few more pieces…
Obviously, an internet connection is a must, and a software for card games, and poker hands are ideal pastime…
The middle age man cannot feel this inconceivable guilt for looking busy all the time: All he needs is to be left alone, surrounded by silence, quality time…
The woman is highly suspicious, but these “out of her skirt moments” suits her grandly.
Going fishing is a striking example of an “internal shed” where you think of nothing in particular for hours on.
People in urban setting, and crammed in small apartments, manage to create an “internal shed” for sanity reason, one way or another.
I do have a large garden, surrounding the house on all sides. In my long absence overseas, two sheds were built: to hosting all kinds of fowls, chicken, rabbits…
At one time, I was left to handle over 100 hens because:
1. Mother likes “fresh eggs” that she has no idea what to do with all that production. Preparing cakes to distribute is exorbitantly expensive. I ended up touring the shops to barter eggs with produce.
2. My brother-in-law loves an “animated garden”, but goes hunting small birds in the morning, carrying this “bird recording” to lure birds closer to shooting them dead …
Luckily, chicken feed got too expensive for the return in egg, and the fowls would stop laying eggs for months. and they died on mass for one reason or another, blaming lynx, rats…
That was an excellent excuse to clear the shed and all that stinky matter…
The price was so cheap that, within a day, people flocked to buy chicken by the dozen. The clients turned out to be skilled catcher of chicken, to my chagrin. You may read detailed report on my “Diary” category.
In any case, mother persisted for half a dozen hens to sustain fresh eggs, and she re-purchased chicken at far higher prices, and she was supposed to take care of them. The same dirty and fruitless task devolved to me, whether I liked it or not: Mother cannot physically enter the shed.
In any case, all the chores were relegated to me on the ground that “I am the able body around”: That’s what the extended family members want me to believe, and act upon…
I wish I had a clean shed, all for me, exclusively for me…
Why fowls have to rob me of my own right for a “shed of my own”?
Note: Part of the post was inspired from a chapter in “A shed of one’s own” by Marcus Berkmann
Adonis Diaries 
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