 |
| This is what the hedge looked like in the beginning, back in 2015 |
There are times when I wonder if rather than suffering with cognitive function difficulties I might actually be slightly braindead! The problem is that rather than learn from each new scrape that I find myself in, I just seem hell bent on repeating the cycle which is both annoying and frustrating for me and quite probably for everybody around me too...
Those readers who've been kind enough to keep up with my super sporadic posting will know that I've promised myself time and time again that I'm going to cut back and do less by way of managing my condition. I've had some moderate success at this as I prefer not to do the washing up and other items of housework as required by tradition, rather I choose to spend this time and energy doing rather more interesting and certainly more satisfying tasks in the house and garden. Well, actually more around the garden than the house, but that's incidental.
Over the past two years I've spent some considerable time outside in the elements, soaking up nature while tending to what used to be an overgrown jungle of a garden. When there's roughly an acre of it and it gets out of hand, it really does get out of hand so this should read spent one heck of a lot of time outside. This year I've spent time pruning back the bramble patch and rambling rose that grows under the front bedroom window, sadly destroying what I believe to be a blue-tit's clutch of three tiny blue speckled eggs that should've been safe inside their soft, mossy nest. Boy, did I feel bad about that one!
I've cut back the wild damson bushes and pulled up weeds, dug out more weeds & planted the more conventional kind in the borders reclaimed over the past couple of years. I dug up the spuds that didn't get harvested last autumn and replanted them in rows so that they could grown with some semblance of order. The garlic was still very disappointing and as for the onions, well, forget it. They are tiny and don't like what to them is obviously waterlogged ground at the front of the house. Oddly enough the ground to the rear of the sheds at the back of the house was lovely and dry the year I grew them there resulting in a bumper crop of both spuds and onions.
I never did get around to using the rhubarb stalks growning in the edge of my flowerbed, but was happy for the leaves to overshadow the ornamental crop beside them. My gooseberries are still awaiting transplantation into beds next door to the rhubarb with their thorny stems adding to the stock proof barrier I'm cultivating there. This won't happen until DG gets his new chain saw out and trims back the horse chestnut beside the gate or else they'll be crushed to within an inch of their lives.
This year I've been good and have cut back various plants once their productive season has finished, often with the result that they've actually started to produce new blooms. I've sprinkled self grown seeds far and wide in the hope of growing sufficient ground cover to hold weed growth in check but in reality it probably will result in a nice damp hidey place for snails and slugs who'll come out at night time and much on my beautiful blooms.
This year's crop of dandelions in my 'new' drive way was just too much to bear, being unable to pluck the blighters daily due to the weather, my body, whatever I gave in after 20 chemical free years and applied the poison known as Round-up and what d'ya know, it seems that some of them have given up the ghost and died. I also gave in to the allure of slug pellets for the first time in decades as the muching mikes moved in on my self grown Rudbekia plants and made a job of decimating them. Perhaps I wouldn't care if I'd an abundance of energy, but I don't.
 | |
| If I can stop the slugs eating them my rudbekkia might one day look | like these in the RHS Gardens at Wisley... |
Time's a great healer, and golly I've got loads of it on my hands since being retired. Unfortunatly it seems to have forgotten about the healing part of its job and left me worse off than ever! Perhaps the fact that I stopped taking two psychotropic drugs used in the treatment of pain due to Fibromyalgia might have a little to do with this, but that's beside the point. I choose this course of action as I'm fed up with the huge weight gain they caused and the fact that I've been unable to loose said weight no matter how hard I've tried. My cardiac health was also a major cause for concern given the fact that one of them causes cardiac arrythmias and resulted in my life assurance policy being loaded 150 times.
So now I'm tucked up with my legs resting on a newly purchased pouffe, trying not to take tramadol for pain. The lyrica isn't enough these days and anti-inflammatory's result in asthma type symptoms which are most unpleasant. I'm losing weight though (slowly, very, very slowly!)
 |
| Mike & I admiring our weekend's handiwork... |
 |
| Doesn't she look well now that she's had a hair-cut? |
So, I've come to the conclusion that basically you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. So perhaps someone would kindly explain why on earth I've taken it upon myself to head off into the wilds of Co Cavan with the Hedge Layers Association of Ireland to undertake a second hedgelaying course this weekend? At least this time there's no camping or arduous journeys involved and I'm looking forward to luxuriating in a four star B&B this time...
Wish me luck!
Polly
No comments:
Post a Comment