Edward Scissorhands And The Raiders Of The Lost Orchard

I am Edward Scissorhands, out in the back garden attacking this wayward sprawl of clematis, bamboo shoots and rapacious potato Glasnevin plants that will never produce spuds. 

Vigorous grower, they said — unruly, freeloading so and so that clambers uncouthly over the lordly laburnum and everything around it, they never added.

Lovely lilac and yellow flowers for months and months, though …

There just comes that tipping point, doesn’t there?, when that wild and carefree jamboree of colour, flow, scent and sensation is, suddenly, an embarrassment … a shock of abandoned frondescence into which entire civilisations might vanish, after that potted yucca that has actually been engulfed — and you can just make out the peeling blue garden shed, its roof burdened by the chaotic tangle of barbarous ivy and unfettered jasmine.

You could meet Indiana Jones and a whole movie crew in there.

The Day of the Triffids is here, and myself and my slightly rusty shears are in there, scything and hacking, taking out buried solar light cords and desiccated, forgotten ornaments as we go. And then gathering up the leafy carnage and disposing of it, down the back fields.

After hauling away the branches and the main stuff in great armfuls out through the side shed and jettisoning it, and sweeping up and removing the next layer of detritus, I am now softly finger-sifting every shade and texture of leaf and twig from the garden pebbles and seashells gathered from a thousand beach walks and scattered here, and tossing them into the brown bin.

The word ‘visceral’ comes to mind, as I become more and more aware of the feel of things passing through my scratched and soiled fingers, the soft zephyr of wind on my face, the languid trill of birdsong, and the warm glow of effort on my brow and under my arms.

Outside, on one of my treks to the fields, two young lads are loitering on the patch of grass outside our side wall, where the Lidl apple and Aldi plum trees are tempting them.

I smile because I know these boys, as in they are me when I was that age, plotting apple and gooseberry raids on Kinnane’s farmhouse across the Mall river from where we lived.

Gardening at night, as we slank up the avenue, and darted in the side entrance to where those luscious gooseberries, and later, plump, red-cheeked apples, lay … moonlight briefly unmasking our giddy faces as we feasted and gathered, before our giggling exits.

Of course old Pop Kinnane and kindly Mrs Kinnane must have known, or the warning signs would have gone up and the neighbourhood watch intelligence gone out. Plump, red-cheeked police men lying in wait among the huge pink rhododendrons …

This time, I am the gamekeeper, having stripped the branches of their fruit much earlier, to avoid last year’s rampages that left lilies and Mont Bretias trampled and broken by tiny Nike trainers.

My own fault for planting those trees there, and no fault attached to these mini-marauders. But, feck it, we love those bright orange lilies.

Great word ‘visceral’, but I am thinking of how far removed my adult self often is from direct, first-hand contact with the senses. All of them. Writing here now, I have access to a myriad words the child still within me never would have recognised … but while I can write ‘visceral’, mini-me harvesting those shadowy gooseberries knew visceral … lived visceral.

I could easily follow myself up that avenue of childhood memories now, researching and reclaiming lost time, and lament the passing of all things and people.

But no, you are where you are, and I am happy enough to potter on while I can in this partially regained paradise. The one outside and the one I inhabit sometimes when I write.

The sun shines on and for codgers too, and I can still cock an ear to those magpies, or follow the flutter flit of riotous butterflies, smell the jasmine and finger these leaves of every shade from darkest green to lightest yellow.

Nothing riotous in my revelries these days, right enough, or especially reckless in my entertainments, but hey, I have discovered the joys of waking up with a clear head the morning after moderation.

Compensatory rationalisation, one might say, and maybe I do occasionally long to thump a football with all my might or dash up the middle of the pitch to meet that cross. But like those cigarettes I still occasionally crave, I’m good with the fact there’s no going back there. 

It’s funny, but when I was younger, green was my favourite colour. Emerald green, really, but so many shades of green I also loved. Love. Got caught up in that feral acclamation of blue as the colour of choice, even wore those uniform navy jumpers, jeans and shirts of varying blue for years, before slowly incorporating the yellows, reds, pinks, greens and whatever else catches my fancy.

An interesting aside to all the above is one one of my sisters has informed me that not only is the Kinnane homestead long again, even the river in front of it has been redirected. So that orchard really has been lost.

And now, through the windows, or out here presently, I revel still in the many shades of green that are the foundation of this riotous garden of many shades and delights. Now that Edward Scissorhands has done his work.