Sometimes it is just so much better to do things yourself. The tomatoe plants had to come out, and that seemed a mammoth task, as they had grown so tall, and the ones I did not stake took over every available space. It was nice to have such an abundance of this tomatoes, but looking at my back garden, and to some extent my front, my courage just sagged down to my shoes as we say in Afrikaans [my moed sak tot in my skoene].
So when I heard this plaintiff 'mevrou! mevrou! 'meaning mrs, mrs,', and I saw the scrawny body of Nicky, who sometimes do some gardening work for me, leaning over the gate, I was quite glad, although I swore never to take him on again. We now have a fixed rate that we have to pay gardeners and domestic workers, and the people are very stern about that, but they don't think it wrong to stand chatting for fifteen minutes with a passing friend, or disappear for fifteen minutes to buy cigarettes.
The last time I had Nicky, he worked for an hour, then told me that he had to fetch his pills from the clinic, and stayed away for about two hours. When he finished later, and I told him that I had deducted the two hours pay, he got really angry, and turned just a bitty nasty.So I asked him to explain to me why, when he had no other work, did he choose to come on a day that he had to go to the clinic! he just muttered something unintelegable, gave me one furious look, and stomped off, and I had not seen him for about six weeks since!
But both our wraths have now wore off, and I said okay, I'll take him for the day, but no chatting, running to the shop, or going to the clinic!
So I showed him the tomato bushes, and told him that there was a lot of plants underneath, and to be careful, and not take them out. He gave me a nasty glare, pulled his back up straight, and told me haughtily that he knew flowers from weeds, thank you! The piece of garden where most of the tomatoes grew, was where I had planted a lot of indigenous plants, as I wanted to convert the whole place, and just plant water wise stuff.
I had a few orders for the bags that I make, so I went on with that, hoping that my cheeky gardener would know which plants to take out. When his teatime came, I made him a cuppa and a sandwich, and decided to have a look at what he was doing. He had started on the part where there was no flowers or other plants, so I told him again to be careful when he got to my indigenous patch.
When he went on lunch I went round to have a peep, and to my bally disgust he had removed every single indigenous plant, even the aloes, leaving only a clump of daisies, and some strawberries that grew on the side!
Almost did him some bodily harm when he came back, but he could not understand what I was making such a fuss about, as, he explained patiently, he had taken out all the weeds! I told him to show me where he ditched them, and there was my beautiful, pampered plants, looking very sad indeed! 'Oh, but that is weeds!' he told me, looking at me with great pity, and I just again realized, do things yourself, or suffer the consequences!!!!