ONE of the casualties of the winter has been the raised bed around the aged apple tree in our garden.

Despite my best attempts to patch it over the past few years, part of it has finally given up the ghost and collapsed bringing to a close my plans to one day grow enough wild garlic to cook something edible.

“I think we should give up on your carpentry skills,” said the housemate as we surveyed the scene following the last rainy weekend.

“I thought I’d done quite a good job,” I replied nudging the sorry looking pile of rotten wood, screws, nail and assorted fittings with my foot.

“Maybe it’s time we got a professional in,” she said rolling her eyes.

“I think we could maybe just scrap the whole thing and replace it with ready made beds,” I suggested.

“ I think it might be easier and we can change the size and give us a bit more space in the seating area and we won’t need to replace the whole thing if bits of it get damaged in the future,” I added.

“We could I suppose,” she replied, shocking me by agreeing with a suggestion for the first time since 2005!

“We could go for a look around some garden centres on the weekend as it’s going to be a nice day,” she added.

Grudgingly I agreed realising the lack of rain in the forecast for Saturday would result in a day working in the garden if I didn’t agree to go shopping for the garden.

As Saturday dawned with clear blue skies and the promise of spring I was more than happy to take to the car for a trip around some local garden centres.

“We just need four enormous planters,” said the housemate. “We’re not going to come back with anything else. We’ve got enough of everything.”

“Ok,” I agreed. “Although it is usually you who tends to make the impulse buys which end up with us coming home with a fountain…or a bag full of new fish for the pond…or a garden table.”

“Not this time,” she stressed. “This time it’s just the planters. We’ll have enough work to do when we take the old raised bed apart and transfer all the plants.”

I resisted the temptation to question the ‘royal we’ as we trundled into the first garden centre for a wander around.

“I think we should have a coffee first,” she announced, clearly distracted by the smell of freshly baked cakes.

As we sat down with our tasty snack I noticed her eyes opening wide.

“Look at that cute crow on a stick,” she said. “He’d look perfect in that corner of the garden where there’s a space…and look at that amazing statue of a stag…I know exactly where we could put that.”

“But we only want some garden planters. We didn’t come to but statues and wobbling crows,” I pointed out.

Two hours later we pulled up outside The Mother’s house.

“Come and look at our purchases,” said the housemate almost dragging her through the door.

“It’s beautiful,” said The Mother peering into the car and coming face to face with our new stag.

“I’m just glad I didn’t have to share the back seat with him all the way home as I usually do when you impulse buy!”