heavy duty pottering

I spent a lot of time in the garden over the weekend. I’d like to say I’ve been doing a little light pottering, but my aching arms and shoulders tell a different story, one of digging, hauling, shifting stones and wrestling with an 8 foot high willow screen. (My aching legs I have to blame on the 10k race on Sunday morning).

It’s starting to get chilly round here, so I picked the last of the tomatoes, which were never going to ripen where they were anyway, and brought them inside.

(I also painted my nails a very lovely teal colour, which I am enjoying rather a lot. Possibly unwise to do it before all that gardening, but they’ve held up remarkably well).

After last week’s herb drying success, I attacked the sage too, and brought in just over half of the plant, which is now hung up to dry above the stairs. I’ve left the rest – I think it’ll grow for a little while, and the garden was looking a little forlorn after I’d hacked all that off.

I also dug up this rose bush, which took several hours and an awful lot of hard work. My arms still ache today. I tried to dig it up a couple of years ago – it’s right in the middle of the sunniest bit of the garden, and I don’t have much space. I gave up last time, and it went on to flower over and over, so I gave it a reprieve for a while.

On Saturday though, I said thank you, picked the last of the flowers, and set to with the spade. I’m not a huge fan of roses, although it is rather cheerful to have flowers pop up outside your window with no effort whatsoever, and this bush looks straggly and out of place in my tiny garden, and takes up rather too much space.

All that might not have mattered if it hadn’t have been right in the way of where I wanted to put the fence for my little terrace.

I stood in the road to take this picture of the front (or back, depending on your perspective), of our house. As you can see, we have absolutely no privacy whatsoever in the garden – the pavement runs all the way around, and although the street is a quiet one, I’ve hankered after a place to sit with a peaceful cuppa for a long time. We’re close now, so close. Those stakes have been replaced by a willow screen, which, in time, will be replaced by a living willow hedge. I cannot believe how excited I am to have a little cosy hideaway space!

I do realise it looks rather mad from this angle. It’s difficult to photograph the house without including all the neighbours’ cars and windows! That’s city living for you I suppose… And you’ll have to excuse the scruffiness of the garden in general – I’ve spent so long concentrating on this bit, and now working full time and dark evenings are taking their toll as well… I’ll catch up with myself eventually. And I also realise it’s not very sociable to want to shut the street out – I don’t really, but I would like to be able to eat breakfast outside occasionally without feeling like I was camping out on the pavement…

More photos of the garden terrace project soon, when it’s a little more finished. I won’t say properly finished – at my current work rate it’ll be another several years. I’ve spent a lot of time in this space, thinking, feeling, watching, deciding what to do with it. I’m still not sure I’ve got it right, but there’s little about the garden that stays still anyway in my experience. (Except perhaps those enormous ancient paving stones. Beautiful, but moving them once was enough, and they’re staying right where they are for the next few decades now!)

Photos soon anyway, and you can see the whole thing from start to (nearly) finish.

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