NICE weather for gardening. If you like that kind of thing.

Personally, I am of the same mind as the person who described it as “talked-up housework that you have to do outside”.

It’s true that gardening is mostly tidying up, with a bit of horticulture thrown in.

And by horticulture I mean taking stuff out of pots and putting them in the ground in the often futile hope that they will live to see next week.

Of course, it has come to my attention that some people — as strange as this may seem — actually like gardening.

We have aunties who like it, for instance, but that’s obviously the kind of thing aunties were put on the earth for.

Then there is an old school friend of mine who has been running a garden centre for more than 30 years, and still loves nothing more than getting his hands in a bag of compost.

Not me.

So I have been disturbed to find myself spending more time in garden centres, over the last month, than in the whole of the rest of my life put together.

That’s because we are at the stage in the major landscaping of our (quite large) garden when we suppose we had better get some plants.

All the satisfying garden jobs, like killing slugs, concreting, building things and putting down turf, are out of the way, and now we need green things to fill some gaps and give it some colour.

We hadn’t really thought about this before, because the main thrust of the redesign was making it low-maintenance, even though we came to this conclusion via completely different routes.

My wife has got it into her head that, although it is 20 or 30 years away, we have to be prepared for when we will be too old to maintain it.

But the kind of gardening she now wants to avoid — planting runner beans, for instance — I never had any intention of doing anyway.

My way of thinking is: the less time you spend getting and keeping the garden up together, the more you have left to spend in it, sat in a deck chair or even the hot tub, with a drink in your hand, listening to the Test match.

So it is disappointing to find that with the South African tourists beaten, the West Indians thinking about going home, and autumn approaching, I am still being dragged round garden centres, as if I can offer useful opinions on which plants to buy.

My wife’s faith in my knowledge seems to be based on the fact that, when we were in secondary school, one of the lessons on my timetable was something called rural studies.

As far as I can remember, it consisted mainly of basic gardening tips, and as I can’t now recall a single thing that we were taught, you couldn’t say it was very successful or useful.

I know one end of a spade from the other, but not my onions.

The most bizarre thing about rural studies was that it was, for some reason — like woodwork, technical drawing and rugby — for boys only.

The girls did cooking and sewing instead, and although this obviously has massive benefits for millions of men in this country, for which we should be eternally thankful, I can’t say I really approve of the kind of gender stereotyping that leads women to the conclusion that men should do gardening, or should know much about it.

And what does all this tell us?

The epitome of Sod’s Law is not the toast that always falls butterside down, but God organising the gardening season to coincide with the cricket season.