I had a rough night with only a few hours of decent sleep. I felt annoyed, sleepy and irritable. Yet, somehow, after a few cups of pitch black coffee, I realized that it would probably be best to just skip all other plans and start gardening early. That would certainly be better than getting annoyed by useless advice by useless people in useless facebook groups. This morning I saw someone promoting a book on "how to overcome your masturbation addiction with the help of Jesus". Obviously, I read the first few pages. Void of capital letters, punctuation marks or spaces between paragraphs, it was technically as horrible to read as the content itself. Apparently, if you lay your dick in the hands of a Mexican named Jesus, it's not longer masturbation. In that case, it's gay and we all know God is ok with that. Or, if He's not, that author will probably release a sequel soon, "How to overcome your gay addiction with the help of God" and earn another three dollars.

The garden was empty, all of them were. Perhaps most of the gardeners were still sleeping or just not keen on hard work during the Ramadan. The first person I saw was a drunk throwing the bottles from the day before in a glass container. I took the necessary equipment from the shed and started clearing the weeds. It was easy at first, working my way around the raspberry bush. But when I reached the part with grass, things got a bit nastier. Grass is a bitch, especially its roots, but eventually I bulldozed my way through that obstacle as well. Like last time I hacked and bashed and smashed my way through countless of green things. The sun was burning my skin and the sweat was rolling over my face. One liter of coffee and one liter of Aquarius kept me going until nature decided it was time for revenge.

While hacking my way through the weeds, I apparently disturbed a sandbees' nest. Suddenly there were bees everywhere, seemingly inspecting what had become of their habitat. One of them got stuck in my shoe and stung me, which apparently told other bees that I was the culprit here. I saw them roaming around, munching on the little white flowers. Once in a while, one of them would fly up to me to tell me to get lost. I offered a truce. I was even prepared to negotiate about giving them a piece of land on the other side of our parcel. But they wouldn't listen so after a few minutes I decided to give them some time off. 

I left ground zero and sat down on one of the chairs to inspect my foot. It was already swelling, itching and stinging. I put a bottle of cold water on the hump, which was uncomfortable in more ways than you can imagine so I tried to forget about the hole thing and put a cigarette in my mouth. I looked at my arms, they were covered in sweat. My back started to itch, so did my legs and my buttocks. What the hell was going on here? Did more than one bee sting me? Had other insects decided to join in on the human flesh buffet? Luckily, I had my little towel, my trusted piece of rough wiping cloth. I scratched the sweat away and got back to work.

I dug a first trench and then a second one. Then I took a scratching break. I noticed more bumps and immediately a bunch of curse words appeared in my head. Another cigarette followed, and another bottle of Aquarius. Then it struck me: allergy. Here comes a fun story, I'm allergic to my own sweat during hot temperatures. At times like these, I wish I was just allergic to gluten so I could just be an annoying ass about it. But my own sweat? How fucking lazy does that sound. "No, I can't help you today, it's too warm outside and I'm allergic to my own sweat". Ok, I AM lazy but this just sounds like a lame excuse. 

A year or two ago I had a conversation about this condition with my doctor. She told me that treating it would be possible but it would consist of smearing expensive lotions on my skin and probably getting some anti-allergy injections. Is that worth it? I don't think so. Yet, is it worth having a garden when the work can cause this kind of inconvenience? Well, I guess the best way to cope with is is to learn from it. The things with the bees was unfortunate and being allergic to myself is a nuisance but I guess I could have known. I'm allergic to most people. That's probably why I hate having sweaty bodies around me at concerts. That's probably why I dislike the gym. I am literally allergic to people on hot days. I'm going to use that, maybe I can get my doctor to write me a note about it. 

Well, I noticed that this blog is not very funny but how would you feel when your whole skin is tickling and burning? There is little else to write. Watering the few plants I have already put in the ground is not that exciting. Although, I have to say, the pumpkin and the tomatoes are doing quite well and I did find an almost perfect potato when I was digging trench three. I'm going to write an eviction notice for the sandbees now. I want those morons off my property and on another part of my property. Because in the end, I think we can be friends. I made them a peace offer by sowing wild, native flowers in what I call the "flower garden". Let them have their orgies there and not on my foot.

Well, see you next time. There are still plenty of gardening adventures to come...



​Rik

Our incredibly lazy sit-down comedian Rik Stalknecht recently got his hands on a piece of gardening land. Suddenly, this inveterate couch-crusher turned into a frantic gardener. And, much like everybody who finds a piece of soil to plant some vintage vegan food, Rik also turned into a professional gardening blogger.

​Since Rik has no other outlet than Merchants Of Air, we had no other choice than to publish the writings. So from now on we will regularly publish these columns.  We are very sorry...

On the other hand, this thing might help get you started on your own little garden. Rik does know a thing or two about fruit and vegetable growing. 

When I first heard about this little piece of land I was immediately interested. I could already see the bell peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, asparagus and cabbage grow. Old memories popped up in my mind. Young me throwing leeks into holes in the ground, young me picking up potatoes, young me throwing rotten eggs against a tree to mess with the chickens. Come to think of it, that last one was pretty mean, throwing their unborn children against that old beech tree. Of course, the hens ate it all. They ate everything we threw at them. The even started picking on one of their own after we put it back behind the fence of their residence. 

We also invented a fun game to play with the chickens after reading about ancient Romans' interrogation techniques. Back then children learned real important stuff in school. The game was one of stamina. We would steal maize from the nearby field, smear our legs with honey, stick the corn grains on the honey and then play hide and seek inside the chicken den. One of my nephews or friends counted to fifty and we all ran to hide behind one of the bushes. The chickens, who adored the mix of maize and honey followed us frantically, picking the delicacies from our tender childish flesh.

​It hurt like hell.

The strip of land I plan to exploit is 5x14 meters, plus a few small strips for a herb table, which we'll call 'Herb Alpert', and for a flower garden. The last one is for the bees which obviously are incredibly useful to pollinate your soon-to-be soup. I mean, in the last two days I have destroyed several of their favorite flowers and next week more of their property will be disowned so the least I can do is give them a bunch of tasty little flowers to munch on and an insect hotel, where they can engage in all those creepy little insect fetishes of theirs. It will be a nice hotel, more like a motel actually, with a tiny red led light, an "open" sign and a bar with fresh sugar water. In the lobby I'll play some Chopin while barely dressed bumblebees sign in the guests and show them to their room. It will be the best bee hotel in the whole world, complete with a tennis court, a sauna, free massages and free underground parking. And then I'll build a wall around the red ants nest. Those fuckers will no longer illegally enter this little garden of mine.

Actually, I am going to build a wall but not against ants. There are two ground animals that we will have to tackle; snails and rabbits. There are plenty of rabbits around this area, enough to not trust any restaurant that serves them. I distrust them in the same way I distrust Chinese restaurants selling "Park Duck". My bunny wall will be made from metal, possibly thrash metal. Rabbits have sharp little teeth that can gnaw through everything, except metal. Snails hate everything sharp so I'll protect my plants with sharp eggshells. Lazy slow little cunts as their are, snails also hate coffee so I will use coffee-grounds around their favorite food. Coffee-grounds, the leftovers from making coffee, also fertilizes the soil, hurray.

But first things first. Before I had the chance to put anything in the ground, it had to be cleared and dug around. The whole lot was covered in undergrowth, from nettles to pieces of now wild leek to grass and every rubbish the neighbours had tossed over. So I took a shovel a started hacking the soil. I removed about two centimeters of soil, raked all the green together and threw it away like an empty bag of crisps. I allowed three species of fauna to stay; the seringa, the raspberries and the redberries. The last two are delicious. I don't know who planted them there but they're mine now. In fact, while I was working the soil, I lived solely of these two fruits. They gave me everything I needed: sugar, water and a completely lack in conversation. Absolutely perfect.

A man walked by my parcel. He stood there for a few moments before I decided to show that I had noticed his appearance. I was hoping he would just go away, like I do with most people, but he just stood there with a wiseacre grin on his toothless mouth. Suddenly he said "You have to spray that all out, kill everything with burning poison from the depths of hell and wait a few months". I replied: "Not gonna". He grinned harder and simply repeated his monologue. I could have sprayed it all to death and make it easy on myself but I think Monsanto is already rich enough. Plus, I wanted to do some hard labour for a change. So I ignored the untoothed and got back to my weeds demolishing.

Then he started talking about digging trenches and covering the weeds in them. I tried to explain that I wasn't going to do that because the soil had already been enriched last year but I was talking to a wall. So eventually I just nodded, saying "yeah, that's what I'm going to do now". He then offered me cucumber plants before he started another monologue about my neighbour's tomato plants. It was a bizarre conversation but quite honestly, I don't know who was worse in it, him or me. I mean, let's face it, I communicate like a vacuum cleaner, barely. After the grinmeister left, I got engaged in a conversation with a white butterfly, which was a lot more amusing. 

Nonetheless, after several hours of shoveling, sweating and apologizing to the worms I turned homeless, my piece of soil was ready to receive its first plants. Timing was essential because a friend was coming over with some of his leftover fauna. But I made it. I broke one shovel and the nettles certainly got their revenge but now there were potatoes ready to be planted. That smashing pumpkin plant looked hungry for dirt and water and the cauliflower practically begged for a spot on that awesome piece of plant real estate. 

Just like when I was a little kid I made holes in the ground and put my new friends inside. I like digging holes in the ground to put my friends in. I guess that's why I moved to another city, otherwise I would have definitely become an undertaker. It still looks like an appealing job to me. You can get rid of people before they even start bothering you. You mostly have to be silent and nobody is really happy to see you. Oh, the joy.

But I'm digressing a bit, so back to the veggies. My phone was a great help. It made it easy to look how much space I needed between the plantings. It also told me, or at least a few websites did, that it would be best to plant potatoes and tomatoes on the side. Bunnies don't eat those and quite often also stay away from the rest too. They don't pass the "tompotato-barrier". I'm still going to build the fence though. For now, the plastic bottles will probably do. Nature hates plastics, except for whales. Apparently whales can't get enough of plastic bags. They keep up getting stranded on the beach with tonnes of plastic in their stomachs. Dumb animals (*).

Eventually, after two days of planning and hard labour, parts of my soon to become spaghetti sauce were ready to play the waiting game. It was a heck of a long time ago since I last did some heavy duty work. Now, most of my muscles are trying to call the domestic abuse hotline so I guess I'll give them a bit of rest. But very soon I will be back, clearing another lot in my ever evolving garden. Come back soon to find out how well (or how horrible) all of that went. I will now put my tired body to rest.


Rik


​
(*) Keep in mind, Rik Stalknecht identifies as a comedian.