Since the central character would be me, it may not have quite the mana or the thrill of The Constant Gardener.
Somehow, I doubt Rachel Weisz would be keen to play the leading role, even though she previously filmed something a hop and a skip away from my alleged garden.
Would it help if my property was on the Enterprise Dunedin video designed to have film-makers flocking to the city? Yeah, nah.
The qualities of the delusional gardener include a passion for planting but never bothering to provide any after-care beyond a token couple of waterings, being able to hold your own in a gardening conversation simply because after 20 years’ involvement with a plant fair many of the plant names stuck and loving other people’s gardens.
My technique, if I can be so bold to call it that, involves devoting 10 minutes to a gardening task, being distracted by something else, wandering off and then spending another half an hour retracing my footsteps to find whatever paraphernalia I was using. I may have even forgotten what task I had been feebly attempting by the time the said equipment is located.
But the wonderful thing is that during this process, there is plenty of time to think and reflect on well, anything, although often much time is spent wondering why I am so ridiculous.
That’s the way it was a few days ago when I removed my gardening gloves, who knows why, after half-doing some pruning, some guerrilla poisoning of passionfruit vines and a little hedge trimming.
It took me the usual 30 minutes to locate the gloves which, contrary to any reason, turned up on a seat nowhere near any of the jobs I was attempting.
In the course of retracing footsteps, unsuccessfully scrabbling through cupboards to find another pair and berating myself for this beyond irritating tendency to mislay things, I got to wondering what it must be like to have an unwavering confidence in yourself.
This was in the light of speculation around whether Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was about to fall on his sword or be pushed on to it after a poor poll result.
It came hard on the heels of a more than usually inedible word salad smorgasbord from him earlier in the week.
The PM frequently uses the excuse he is not a career politician to counter criticism of his communication skills or ability to think on his feet.
But being a politician is his career now and has been for some years.
As the PM, he needs to be able to communicate in a straightforward way which is not confusing.
In the commentary around this, from people who follow politics closely, there has been reference to his inability to take advice and feedback, and his complete lack of self-doubt.
Most of us might relate to being unable to take advice (me with gardening tips, for instance) and I doubt any of us is particularly keen on negative feedback, as relevant as it might be, but overweening confidence is a foreign country to me.
I wonder if it is something more common in male leaders — perhaps with the exception of Margaret Thatcher.
How many women still endure workplaces where men fill the top job regardless of whether they are actually that great at it?
Annoyingly, I have found it not uncommon for women working in such places to feel sorry for the incompetent boss or even come to their rescue when their inadequacies come to light.
Such women did not always appreciate the view that if these men put their hand up for the big jobs (and the big bucks) because they believed they could do them, they needed to deliver or get out.
Is part of the reason for their tolerance and generosity that too many women are still not confident about their own importance in the workplace?
That will not have been helped by the government’s butchering of the pay equity regime last year.
If the women ministers in the PM’s Cabinet feel they must stand by their man no matter what, propping him up or rescuing him if necessary and some of them end up losing their seats at the next election, I will have little sympathy.
It’s uncharitable, I know, but fuelling my disdain is that these highly paid women did not even bother to explore the impact their pay equity changes would bring to the lives of thousands of other women and their families.
If they and the PM are so confident in their decision-making on this and expect there will be no backlash, they are as delusional as the gardener in me.
• Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
