Surprising love grew slowly ... and then I was cuckolded

It took me a long time to discover the thrills of this activity. But after finding it, I now feel like a fool, writes Rory Gibson.

Rory Gibson.

It took me a long time to discover the thrills of gardening.

Initially I saw it merely as a nerdy form of escapism - escape from housework, escape from the children during their annoying years (0-21), escape from my wife’s determination to bestow upon me even duller projects than gardening.

Attending to the yard scraped in as acceptable use of family time because it met two important criteria: I couldn’t leave the premises and it was deemed to add value to the nest.

Fast forward 15 years and I live by myself. By myself but not alone, because I have a decent garden to which I willingly escape for the pleasure it gives as opposed to the refuge from other chores its predecessors were.

It’s still a work in progress and I’m always looking for new additions to fill out the beds. That’s how how I came to be cuckolded.

Interesting word, cuckolded. It comes from the French word “cucu”, meaning cuckoo, a bird that lays its eggs in other bird’s nests. The unsuspecting nest owners raise the cuckoo chicks as their own even though they bear no resemblance to the host parents.

In modern usage it roughly means you’ve been cheated on, particularly if you end up with children unsuspectingly sired by a third party.

A couple of years ago someone gave me some seeds, telling me they were Forget Me Nots. I didn’t know what Forget Me Nots looked like but they sounded cool.

Eventually three tiny plants emerged in the pot and I’ve nurtured them, fed them and sheltered them all this time, waiting for the explosion of blues flowers I’d been promised.

My girlfriend came to visit this week and while we were inspecting the grounds I pointed out my very healthy looking Forget Me Nots and inquired whether she knew when I could expect them to bloom.

She shattered my horticultural world. “They’re not Forget Me Nots. Forget Me Nots are little ground-cover plants. Those things are a metre tall.”

Well what the hell were these imposters then? I downloaded one of those identify-this-plant apps and aimed it at the cuckoos.

Or should I say Golden Pendas. A tree that can grow 20 metres high. That’s what I’ve been pouring my love into.

I feel a bit like that American couple who adopted a Ukrainian girl thinking she was six years old only to claim later she was really an adult dwarf who was out to kill them.

Anyone got a rainforest that needs a few canopy trees?