“Be careful !” yelled Nick, which made me jump and impale myself on the aloe vera.

I had been cautiously insinuating my sturdy self to the back of the flower border by the pool to break up the sun baked soil with my little trowel. All was well until he yelled and a spike from the mutant aloe vera drove itself into the side of my ribcage.

Notes to self – Don’t garden in a bikini. Don’t assume gardening is a gentle, soul restoring task. Nail Nick’s mouth shut.

Gardening, to my mind, should involve wafting around your own private oasis, a little thoughtful stroking of abundantly blossoming, verdantly green, happy plants and maybe a little light dead heading if you feel cruel.

It shouldn’t involve streaming sweat like a contestant in the all Turkey olive oil wrestling championships, choking on your own hair (which gets wrapped around your sweaty neck) and a follow up dose of enough antihistamines to ward of a swarm of killer bees. But sadly, for me, gardening involves all of these.

Gardening in Turkey is not for the faint hearted. Between the likelihood of coming face to face with a poisonous kirk ayak (Centipede in English, Forty Feet to the hard bargaining Turks!) slithering its segments out of some damp crevice, you also have the spiders which jump and bite, plants that sting and poison and if you survive all that the burning sun will fry your brain.

Thank God I only have a small garden, which is mainly pool, which is a lot less dangerous than most of the planting.

As I scratched irritably at a rash on my hands the other day I thought I’d try and find out what had caused it. The culprit, in this instance, turned out to be the plumbago; that hard to kill, flamboyantly flowering, innocently baby blue cornerstone of my garden. Whilst it thrives on neglect, heat, drought, overwatering and excessive pruning, all of which are essential qualities for a plant hoping to survive a season in my courtyard and still blissfully blossom on into the autumn, it is also possessor of a toxic sap that causes an itchy, bumpy rash in sensitive types (me).

A little more research unearthed (no pun intended) the knowledge that the plumbago is the least of the poisonous problems in my garden. The Lantana, which blooms beneath the kitchen window and which is much loved by the neighbours who spend the sleepy heat of the afternoons admiring its brilliant Spanish flag clusters of tiny trumpet shaped heads, is so toxic and invasive it is banned on several continents. And the oleander whose pale pink flower heads herald spring is actually so poisonous it will kill you, in about three hours, if you drink a tea made from its leaves, which is hard to do accidently, thankfully.

Despite it’s hazards I love my garden. I don’t know much about it and I can’t give you the latin name of any of the it’s rambling occupants but it gives me and the neighbours a lot of pleasure.

The local children, who play outside in the street, collect the fallen flowers and make fairy baths in the bowls of water we leave out for the village dogs passing back and forth on their hot herding duties. I often open the courtyard door to find the bowls packed full of blossoms and the blonde haired toddler from across the lane chirping bird song happy stories to herself as she moves her imaginary fairies in and out of their flower filled bath with intense concentration.

The neighbourhood ladies will be sitting in a row in the shade keeping an eye on her and admiring the curling strands of the white starred jasmine. “Very beautiful scent”, çok güzel koku, they exclaim as the sweet heavy jasmine mingles with the soft notes of honeysuckle in the baking air.

And then there is the watering. On those early mornings and glowing evenings, when I remember the garden is thirsty, I can self hypnotise myself into a zen like trance just by watering the garden. Wrapped up in a sensory blanket of droplets drumming on leaves, the glitter of light in prism beads of water and the summer scent of burnt earth after the rain rising up around me I can stand there for ages, lost in the moment, entranced by the peace bringing calm of the process.

Beware of the garden, because if it isn’t stabbing you or poisoning you it is mesmerising you into a losing a few hours of your life playing water in rainbows over the living, breathing, growing beauty of it all.

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