I got to spend my Sunday gardening,
It wasn't the kind where you trim the barely yellow leaves of your bonsai, as you talk to it and stroke it, nor was it the kind where you just water all your pots which irritate your neighbour because they take up so much space in the corridor.
It was real gardening, as in dig a hole to plant the plant, loosen and mix up the soil properly, and move the earth around kind of gardening. Actually, it was mostly digging holes nicely. The reason for doing so was that we were helping to transplant some lily bulbs from some construction site nearby to our target place.
The first step was to go to the site, and dig out the lily bulbs. If you were a passer-by, you'd probably have thought that we were nicking the bulbs. But hey, the plant isn't likely to survive while impaled on a steel rod and hoping to die quickly under the foundations of your new multi-million dollar property.
We were saving them. And if you had tried to stop us, I just might have impaled you with a steel rod, Vlad style.
Next, we moved to our targeted location, and commenced shovelling the hole in shape. It wasn't quite a hole, it was more like a miniature trench (or soil walled storm drain), but that was how we intended to plant a row of 'dem lilies.
So after setting the bulbs in place and making sure the right parts were where they should be, we were supposed to (loosely) pack the soil into the remaining trench area. I felt pretty stupid for loosening the soil up waaay earlier, because it had clumped up under its own weight again, thus I had to re-loosen it (cue chinese idiom: shi bei gong ban). But I guess I'm pretty okay with changkol swinging. It also made me think about what they say for just about every okinawan weapon I read about online. It can't all be for threshing rice or pounding stuff.
Yeah, and so we did. It took up most of the day. I could have done other stuff, but I guess it was cathartic enough for me. Besides there was a playground with rubber surface, which allowed me to practice those rolling break-falls which I can no longer execute half-right.
At least no one caught me in action.
I get news that there is a chiku tree to rescue. Here I come.
