Smallest is home after throwing up and she had her earphones on. Husband is in the shed, and ditto, so no one heard me… I had decided to clamber over the piles of logs (was it wise?) and investigate the space behind the shed.
These chunks are too heavy for me…
Which was weedy and filled with firewood in waiting. I pulled out a few weeds and was trying to clamber back. It would have been fine if I had not stepped down too hard on a pile of very soft sawdust. My foot went down and down and was close to my ankle snapping (I think) and me being stuck behind the shed for quite a long time.
Some bindweed coming over from next door.
As you can guess I did manage to put some weight back on it and fumble my way out of the space I no longer want to explore. I think I may be stuck to the house for a bit. Again not helping the grand scheme of things. I feel I may grapple with leg pain for the next few days. I said I’d work tomorrow as well. I don’t need to be hobbling round exam rooms. Ouch!
Needs cutting back but I didn’t take my snips on my clamber!
Think we will have a few roaring fires between now and Halloween as a lot of seasoned logs were split today. Not taking the credit as I was still eradicating spiky things – brambles and a neglected rose/crab apple? It was covered in brambles so that it was almost hidden. I’m not sure whether it has ever been pruned in our five years here. But the brambles were coming through the fence so originate next door.
Sunday with rain drops!
But I have had a sickness bug so even if it had been dry for five minutes I didn’t feel like being outside. My stomach still feels a bit dodgy. I only went to work for 3 hours on Friday but was it enough to pick up a bug from the college? Social distances were observed so I should have been far enough away not to get the germs… No one in the house has this? It’s not the symptoms of Covid and I don’t like being sick! How mysterious!
I think our gardening adventures are going to be curtailed of October continues to be wet. It would be nice if the rain would do one…
I did mostly spiky stuff to try them out but it’s damp out. Someone said it’s going to be wet all week? No! That’s not good. The gloves aren’t waterproof. And I exterminates several chunky brambles!
Those are all spiky!
It’s been a stop/start kind of day. But at the end of it I have cleared a lot of things I don’t want. The bush I tackled looks like a boring old privet so it will be pruned back hard. Like the bush with orange berries, that’s going too! But I planted a red cordeline next to the transplanted heuchera and that area just needed a fake stone robin as a finishing touch. In the world of an MSer days can get hard unless you can stagger them so doing something different in the garden in short bursts helps me to feel like I am achieving things.
Too much pyracantha for the bin!I love the burgundy colours against the green.
As it is spitting (Scottish term for light rain, in fact it could be called drizzling) intermittently, and I don’t like getting wet, I have time to write but actually I want to be planting! I purchased a couple of cheap plants in my favourite Woolworths replacement store. I have to plant the grasses too and bulbs. Next spring needs to have an explosion of colour! So there are more bulbs to plant too.
Rose haw
Lunch had been forgotten and I went for a packet to be quick. Bad move when something called Piri-something is left. Yuk! But the outside is calling. The Ivy has sprouted buds and I wasn’t going to cut it when it was sunny and covered in bees, but it’s wet now and I need to discourage bees like the monster that came inside yesterday. Seriously huge, like a bird buzzing furiously, I was scared for us all. I am not a naturephobe, more appreciate such beautiful creatures on the other side of the window.
We asked for it in chunks…Don’t look to hard at this one?!?
Can I carry any of the tree chunks I need to pile up? Good question and I have new gloves so maybe I can try? These are coming recommended and I think will be good for all the prickly stuff.
These are flowering again…I hope the striped rose survives trunks landing on it…
It’s lovely out today and I’ve done some of the stuff I had been putting off. I’ve replanted the heuchera that was in the rotten garden box. It is beyond saving that one but I’ve popped the heuchera into the bed I cleared yesterday. I was visited by my friendly robin. Well I would be as I uncovered snails and all sorts.
Sun on the gladioli…
I’ve also done some digging but hey the sun is now too high and it’s my least favoured job. But I replanted the heuchera and was rewarded by a visit from Red. I buried the bulbs I put in on Saturday with a layer of compost from the rotten box so I’ve mulched the bed I cleared.
I’ve also ordered some super tough garden gloves as I am tired of fishing out thorns in the evening! And the tree boys come tomorrow. There is lots happening, like the snails it will happen, slow and sure.
I thought I’d spend some time weeding but the bit I attacked was all spiky so after a little while I gave up as I don’t like feeling attacked back! It was a bit much for me after another afternoon yesterday of lethargy. I’ve run out of my cbd and realising that it was helping, despite it getting the blame (not by me!) for causing the itching. I’ve realised the itching is probably exacerbated by the inactivity which has been recurring during the lockdown period.
Not so easy to dig after three days of rain…Paint everywhere!
I am not full of vim anymore (was I ever?) but I try to narrow that down to anything in particular and it doesn’t appear to be one thing or another. I am trying to focus on finishing things too. We have lots of paint tins needing used. In fact yesterday morning was spent clearing up a tin that toppled over and caused a great big mess (I wasn’t going to say anything about that!) but it was part of the reason my spirits dipped yesterday and despite my youngest helping with the cleanup, finding my jewellery tin abandoned in the garden put me in a foul mood. The tin, a toilet bag and some necklaces are still covered in paint…
But going back to the garden and thinking about removing all the stuff I dislike, so much that I liked about the garden and was going to keep (the horse chestnuts being key here) have had to be removed and it’s really changing what the garden looks like. The grass that grows (wildly) is largely consistent with wild grass, and I think couch grass must have several cultivars? Some of it is wide leaved and some is very thin. I yanked out lots of the thin stuff today but brambles and wild roses grow through it too, as well as the weeds with fluffy seed heads (not dandelions). I hoped that we can perhaps reclaim my older daughter’s flower bed which is wild but she likes the biodiversity and her tree (not planted) as well as the orange gladioli. I will keep at the weeds in it however though I need to find some tougher gloves! Shall I change my blog to weeding within limits?
I did some more digging but I also did some pruning of the laurel. The brown bin is filling. We have lots to get rid of and the pegs are in to start our shed layout.
Spider!
Lots of digging is going to be happening apparently, despite my claim that I’m too old? I think the slabs require a lot more digging until the slabs slope away from the house. We have too many flooding the garden experiences to have the slabs slope toward the house…
But it’s hard work and the grass area in front of the bedroom is obviously full of couch grass, so I am very reluctant for that to be our grass area. It’s going to need some taming!
So much weeding needed!
I have the idea of using the gravel I bought randomly the other week to form the path but I am being told by hubby that it also needs digging… lalala I am not listening! It won’t need much now we have a tamper! I picked it and the crowbar up from the post office.
Gladioli We moved this piece of concrete to make a sloping path from the side gate…Very dusty pale mauve penstemon.
I may have overdone it today! I moved things around and set up a border for the flowerbed in the front. I also cut down some spiky bits and stabbed myself in the process; maybe I need to invest in armour?
In progress…
But it’s not possible to add to the garden waste for collection as it’s full, full, full! And I am trying to avoid further digging cos as I said last time, it wipes me out, fatigue like I have any number of autoimmune conditions all at the same time.
This rose bush needed cutting.
But I moved the little slabs to the front and almost made a circular ring round the bed I have ignored for a while. It needs compost I think and I will use some of the bags I bought on the last trip to the garden shop, which I haven’t visited in a while. I’m not sure whether we checked the ph there but the weeds are rampant…
Trolley was one of my best bargains this year!
I feel a bit more positive after achieving the circle and cutting back the rose which had regrown and I thought I had killed when I dug over that bed. I’ve added a few bulbs (it felt like a lot!) that I hope are not found by squirrels.
Washing off the pea gravel was taking too much water. It will go under the slabs. Hubby got a very heavy crow bar and an even heavier tamper which l had to pick up from the Post Office.From a distance it looks almost circular?
I’ve started this blog so long ago, and in posting about getting paving slabs delivered in March I don’t believe I am still not walking out of the bedroom onto a patio… Every time I think we are going to move forward, my other half finds a reason for me to have to do another bit of demanding physical work. And I can’t, I truly can’t keep digging. I don’t have the strength. I can prune and weed like it is my only role in life but not digging, I feel like running away and not coming back.
Right colour!
The shed has been decided but it’s not really for me and the planning and building seems to have moved full centre on the plans we have for the foreseeable. Which has put said slabs on hold…
Not sure I can plant these where I was thinking I’d plant them!
In St Albans, I dug a pond but my dad helped me when I was flagging but it was when I was turning 35 and just before my MS diagnosis. I’m now closer to planning my fiftieth than I care to think and dad is mid 80s, planning on golfing his way to 100! I am not giving in but I am facing reality. How do I finish the slabs when lifting one is hard and moving four, one at a time, kills me? I’ve been advised in the past to get a work party organised by offering food and drink? Well that’s also easier said than done when we have barely seen a soul during lockdown. In the past I’ve tried to get charities to help. I must be sounding too well off or something, not so in need as others. I got a freebie from a gardener but he does plants rather than hard surfaces.
So I have so many things currently in progress that it is depressing me so much. I am not as fit as I was in November, the Pandemic saw to that. I have only got sporadic work and it pays for the odd coffee/bag of compost from the garden shop, so I am caught in the cycle of being unemployable due to lack of experience and employment that pays the bare minimum. Which garden rescue tv programme can I apply to, without having to stump up a budget or hack off a leg? (Only joking but my MS is largely too invisible… and I have not been raising millions online for others). My Green-fingered Christmas Selfpity Fairy? Ho hum. Ho hum. Ho hum.
Also the right colour but salvia not standing still…Bags of pea gravel…Raking the slab site but it still slopes the wrong way and the trays for drainage will need a bit more dig out! Eek!
We used to get lots of empty drink cans in our front garden (we are on a busyish road) but the wind also deposits other detritus which in Covid times appears to mean the clear plastic gloves… Joys! But seriously who is taking care to wear the damn things and then letting them blow in the wind!
The black sheet is to keep weeds down.
My garden is meant to be my safe space (dog deposits are the other bugbear) and I didn’t expect to have to get gloves on to pick up this random unsafe material and distract me from the other maintenance the garden so obviously requires.
Have I ranted enough? Shall I do passwords or PC/Apple incompatiblity? Or messy family members or finally getting 2-years-suspended jobs finished? Another post, another day!
Grass needs cut/dug up? Tended. As this is an area we will keep!A teeny tiny rose still out today.
