Or rather, here I go again, specifically regarding the Damson Cottage Garden Estate.
Good grief, one day I’ll get it right. I’m up the garden this morning at 7 a.m, having been up and attacking the day since 6 a.m with a Dog Named Nell who can’t yet tell the time. Annoyingly, the Universe has thrust upon me yet another garden vision and is pushing me to crack on with it before the enthusiasm wanes. Whilst I know the Universe knows what is best for me, I can find its pushiness somewhat irksome. Especially as what I really wanted to do was spend all day reading and eating biscuits.
But no! Ignore the Universe at your peril, that’s the lesson I’ve learned.
The thing is, I’ve had so many visions for the garden in the past and not all of them have worked out, and sometimes it feels like I’m going round in horticultural circles. Yes, the garden looks totally different (and therefore totally better) to when we arrived almost seven years ago but STILL it isn’t quite right. What I need, really, is a Monty Don-type genie with a landscape gardening crew, and I can just sit in my deckchair and give orders.
And then I remember Thomas Edison, inventor extraordinaire, who said this:
This, then, was today’s garden list. It was all based on Andy dismantling the remaining four raised beds yesterday because I realised they are in completely the wrong place because of the shade of the trees, and all that grew reasonably well in them last year were leeks, kale, and grass and there is only so much leek and kale one can eat. One does not eat grass, just to be clear. Therefore, the new no-dig veg garden was to be extended a further 5 feet westwards into the light (not THE Light - just light) and a set of 1 metre square beds will be installed due south from there in the area of ground next to the orchard hedge which DOES get a lot of sunshine.
The woodshed has been home to a growing collection of cardboard boxes, several months’ worth in fact, and all the boxes needed their sticky tape and labels removing before they could be used as weed suppressing material for the extension to the veg bed and the new mini-beds. Nell found this process highly entertaining. I did not and when Andy joined the day somewhere around 8.30ish, he found me somewhat short-tempered with sticky tape refusing to unstick and an excitable Nell tangling herself in and out of a huge pile of cardboard.
The day improved though! Ollie arrived and he and Andy set about chopping down the old apple tree. This involved the death of one chain saw and the birth of another, a large set of bungee ropes, much standing back and assessing the progress, several cups of tea/coffee and a ginger cake. But down came the tree eventually and we shall have a good pile of logs to season and burn. I expressed my disappointment that the remaining stump wasn’t being carved into an owl. It’ll be a nice stool to perch on and admire the views though.
Meanwhile, I was transferring the compost from the old raised beds to the newly extended veg beds, having laid the sticky tape free cardboard as a base. The idiot bantams were helping. The idiot bantams are going to a new home as and when we can catch them, but that’s a different story for another day.
According to the Plan of Universe I am also to clear out the woodshed COMPLETELY (it already looks way better now all the cardboard has been vanquished) and set up some sort of shelving on which to grow mushrooms. And I am also to empty the shed at the top of the garden and arrange it so every piece of gardening equipment can be found with ease. I made a start on this today and Andy took a car load of tat to the tip. But Nell was helping a bit too much; also, she’d had a very busy and exciting day, what with all the lawn mowing, the chain sawing, and the compost moving, and she was starting to behave like an overtired and fractious toddler so I made the executive decision to call it a day at 4 p.m and come inside so she had to have a sleep.
To add to the mix, there is a one tonne dumpy bag of gravel sitting by the gate to the driveway that needs shifting up the garden. Every time I see it (which is every day) I sigh and think, ‘Just get on and move it.’ If I had taken a bucket full up every day since it arrived, it would have been moved by now.
Progress made today, then. More progress to be made tomorrow. I’m starting a new Pilates class tomorrow, too. With all this activity, by Autumn I shall have the hips of a racing snake! Ha ha!!
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KJ