…now the work starts…
The garden man was back again yesterday, but this time he sneaked up on me and took me by surprise. I was in the process of unlocking the back gate so he could get in when he got here, and all of a sudden I heard him call good morning!
I peered through the gate to the front, but he wasn’t there. He called again, saw me looking around, and said, ‘I’m here! On the other side of the hedge!’ And there he was, peeping at me through that big hole pulling some of the ivy out had caused.
We have a track that runs along the back of the houses. Most of the houses (we’re about 7 houses and a former shop that’s been converted into 3 flats) have blocked the gardens off so they’re private, but a couple still use the ‘back-in’ where they store their wheelie bins and sometimes their cars.
The garden man had pulled his van into the back-in so he could trim the other side of the hedge. But oh, that hole needs blocking up somehow. I think he/we is/are going to put some kind of bamboo section in there so the bushes can grow through again. We’re also having a fence put against that hedge to keep the dogs in.
While he carried on working, I carried on editing. This is the editing job I started back in March but I’ve been waiting for the author to come back to me with an updated file. The consolidation work is a lot easier and quicker than I thought it would be. I’ve allocated 2 whole weeks to it, with Novella 12 for the great novella challenge sandwiched in the middle.
Before he finished for the day, he dismantled the old greenhouse and carted it away. He started to remove a pile of rubbish that was propped up against a fence that runs down the side of the patio terrace. But as he pulled at the brambles, the fence started to fall down. The brambles and some old wooden pallets were all that was holding the fence up, and as that was a safety hazard, it had to come down.
He’s going to use some of the fencing to block a gap at both ends of the garage. At the front to stop prowlers, well, prowling; at the back to keep those pesky dogs in again. Grand-doggy #1 is a spaniel and he can jump over anything we put in the gap at the back, so we need a proper barrier there.
The job took the garden man a bit longer than he thought it would as the fence was at least fastened along the bottom. But all it needed was a half-decent puff of wind, or even a stumble, and the fence would blow over.
And meanwhile, I carried on editing.
It’s a bit boring doing the same work day in, day out, so again I’m not ashamed to admit that I kept being distracted. The biggie yesterday was the internet. I’ve been using Firefox and DuckDuckGo browsers for a while, Firefox for Facebook only, as FB Purity works on Firefox, and everything else on DuckDuckGo. But it was taking too much time to switch between them, and FB Purity has stopped working on Firefox. I knew it was working on Safari, so I had a look.
Sure enough, FB Purity is working again on Safari, so I thought I may as well just stick to that, and I moved everything back. I’ll keep Firefox on there, just not in the dock. The jury’s out for DuckDuckGo. I like the idea behind it, but it’s not very stable, and I still have ad-blockers that work on Safari.
My knees and ankle were hurting a bit and it took a while to remember my stumble the previous day. But I’m okay. A bit bruised perhaps, and maybe a bit twisted. But okay. When the garden man had finished again for the day, I carefully walked around the garden to have a look at everything. It’s about 12 feet deeper and feels about the same wider. It’s airy and light. And we can see it all now. It was also nice to meet the neighbours at last! (That’s a joke, we already know them. But now we can see them.)
He offered to come back today and cut the grass, which I think the poet accepted. But I have the new internet coming today as well. They haven’t contacted me to let me know when they’re getting here. I may just open the door and give them a blank look, saying I didn’t know they were coming…
Wish me luck!
