The garden man was supposed to be coming back today, as he had an appointment yesterday. But his appointment was cancelled, so he turned up yesterday after all. (I don’t like calling him ‘the gardener’, as that feels a bit pretentious. For me!)
Before he got here I had to move my car over on the drive, so before he went to work, the poet moved it for me, right off the drive and at the front of the house. It was still a bit too close to the drive for the garden man to get his van on, so when I was dressed, I moved it along a bit.
This meant I had to get dressed early, which was good, as it meant I was at my desk raving early as well. I’d already fed the birds, emptied the dishwasher, emptied the tumble dryer, folded washing out of the dryer and put it all away. So I made myself another dirty cuppa and started work. Early.
Normally I would have had half an hour in the garden as well, but as he’s doing all of that at the moment, I didn’t need to. The plan is for him to do the major clearance so I can at least keep on top of the smaller jobs, but he may come back once a fortnight or once a month to get those borders and lawns in order.
After only one day, the front garden looked like a new garden. There was still a lot of work to do, but all the overgrown bushes, trees and shrubs have been cut right back now. One of our bushes encroaches over our garden wall and obscures a road sign, so he cut that back as well as we can get into trouble for obscuring road signs.
There’s a lot of ivy in among it all. A lot. At the back, if we cut all the ivy out, there would be no boundary hedge. So we have to preserve it there. But we’re also having a post-and-wire fence put along that boundary, as well as along any other gaps in the boundary. We don’t want to keep the hedgehogs out, but we do want to keep dogs in.
The bushes and shrubs will have to be cut right back against the boundary ‘hedge’ too. We have a lot of pollinator-attracting plants there, and we want to keep as many of those as we can. But we don’t want to hinder the garden clearance either, so we’ll see what’s left after it’s all done.
We knew we had a conker tree (horse chestnut), but apparently we have a cherry tree as well. I wasn’t sure if that was a cherry blossom tree or an actual cherry tree, but as we have 2 apple trees and 2 pear trees already in the front and back gardens, I secretly hoped for an actual cherry tree. But it’s a cherry blossom. Good for screening, but no fruit.
The garden man is dismantling a derelict greenhouse and carting it away. A big hedge between the front of the house and the back has broken all the glass in it and we can’t get between the greenhouse and the hedge to keep it in check. So the greenhouse is going. It’s no good for my kind of greenhouse gardening anyway, as it’s too old and we can’t heat it or shade it very well. I may get a shiny new one in the future, but for now, the greenhouse needs to go.
When we moved in we had to ‘break in’ to the shed as ivy had crept all over it and blocked the door and window. I think the poet re-felted the roof as well. The roof needs re-felting again, now, and the shed is disappearing again. The garden is reclaiming it. We can see the door and half of one edge plus a single side, and a bit of the roof. But it’s now swamped again by overgrowth. I think that’s all coming out too.
It will be nice to have an open, airy garden again, with more light. One thing I regret is not spending any time just sitting out there, due to it being quite overgrown. I also wish we had a proper long washing line instead of a rotary airer, but we don’t have any posts solid enough to attach one of those to. They need a lot of tension.
So all of this is going on while I’m trying to work. It’s not so bad when he’s working in the front garden, as the office overlooks the back. But as he was in the back garden yesterday, I kept finding myself gazing through the window. It’s not enough to just gaze at the birds now. I also have a proper garden emerging before my very eyes.
Work was just editing again. All day. Consolidating my previous edits with the author’s recent changes to the file and editing those as I go along. Easy to be distracted from. And today’s blog post.
After the garden man had gone for the day (back again today), we went out to look at the previously undiscovered path that led from the shed to a gate. We knew the gate was there but was letting the hedge grow over it. But we had no idea there was a secret path as well.
While we were inspecting it, I didn’t look where I was putting my feet and ended up face-planted on the grass. I was thankful it was only grass I’d fallen on. The poet couldn’t stop laughing for hours afterwards…once he was sure I was all right…😳
I was tired, so I wrapped up early and called it a day at 5pm.
It’s it amazing how fast the garden takes over? Kind of wonderful, when it’s not being annoying. I’m glad you’re not hurt, and hope you aren’t sore today.
I hope you post photos once it’s done!
If we’d have done the work, I would have had time-lapse videos done, so I’ll definitely have pictures once there’s something nice to photograph. It looks a bit scruffy at the moment, but it’s light and airy and looks so much bigger!