gardening
We used to have a nice garden in Long Ashton - not huge, but south facing, with big patio and a fish pond that Pete dug. Here, we just have a rear yard, north facing, with high walls. It’s not very big, it’s not enhanced by the sodding palm tree that Gavin planted (so appropriate for an urban yard, don’t you think?, but the cats do like climbing it), and it was quite overgrown, which has of course just got worse since what has been passing for spring arrived.
It was getting hard to do anything out there - even hanging the washing out was a bit fraught - but every time we looked at it, we thought it was going to take ages, and somehow we just couldn’t make a start.
But yesterday, I suddenly snapped - I’d walked over to Aldi for some shopping, made a huge vat of meatballs for the freezer, and slumped for a couple of hours, and then just decided to go and make a start at about 3.45. Pete came and joined me, and between us we emptied out all the old pots, scraped out the weeds from the cracks in the paving slabs (front and back), pulled up all the dead stuff, Pete laid two of the slabs Gavin had taken up to plant the aforementioned sodding palm tree (thankfully, he left them), and we rearranged all the Japanese Acers in pots that we’d brought with us (and the black grass, and the heuchera, and the gargoyle is now in place). I also cleared up the empty wine bottles and jars that were stashed out there (they’re still stashed, but tidily now).
The compost bin is full, and four bags of garden waste are in the car ready to go to the tip, and the extraneous plastic plant pots went on Freegle, and are being collected in about 15 minutes (gotta love Freegle).
The acers will go in the ground, but it’s the wrong time of year, I think - we’ll do that November-ish when they’ve stopped growing. And I can plant some bulbs, and put something climbing against the walls and fences. And now there’s enough room to sit out, so I’ll keep an eye on Freegle for garden furniture, because the corner is a nice sun trap in the morning.
We have an outside light that can go up, we’ve moved the old table round the corner out of the way, and it generally looks a whole lot better. It only took 3 hours, too - lord knows why we left it so long :)
Mirrored from kestrel.org.