Our weekends look like becoming the garden cleaning crews once more. I liked having a gardening job but I realise now how much time is truly required to keep the garden usable and a pleasant place to be.

I feel a bit rubbish as the last few weeks I have been fighting an infection I didn’t know I had. Combined with recurring twinges from my extreme surgery last year I am now left regretting my gung-ho attitude to taking on the gardens of North Herts for quite so long. And I’ve lost interest in five minute jobs as I have so many of them and I don’t want to keep doing those if I haven’t got a plan.

I have gone all around the back and spotted so many areas of growth I can’t say are weeds or not and lots of areas which need a skip for the stuff which doesn’t belong. There are still lots of plastic containers and builders detritus as well as car maintenance containers needing taken to the local tip.

There are bits where I can see improvement and I’ve got to hope that the next few months allow me to get my wellies on and blitz the tidying and get some seeds planted early enough this year that birthdays don’t stop me from the pleasant planting by exposing the need for boring but necessary maintenance.