40 goodness me that’s a significant number. And it’s Tuesday, Tuesday!!!
Last Tuesday I was pondering life settling into a new routine and that Tuesdays tend to be when we run out of food. Not so this week. It could be Friday before we need to shop.
Tuesday finds us halfway down the hill or halfway up the hill depending on your perspective.
The Cornish hedge that forms one of the borders of the garden is as out of control as our hair. At some points it is 12 feet high and normally we pay someone with hard core tools to get the job done. That’s not an option this year and unlike our hair we can’t just leave it. The local or county council, whose responsibility both the hedge and the rough ground were before the age of fiscal austerity, are quick to point out any overgrowth. Despite never having asked us if we would take over the responsibility for these two areas once they arbitrarily decided not to bother.
We warmed up on Monday doing the easiest half.
Rain is the new weather pattern, after weeks of sunshine,not particularly conducive to hedge trimming. We also have a problem storing all the prunings, the easy end of the hedge yesterday filled a whole builders dumpy bag. This morning’s dog walk saw us visiting a very close building site and being gifted two more bags by builders who were more than happy to give them away.
Before I thrill you all with a photo of dumpy bags. Here are two roses we also met on the dog walk.
Full dumpy bag.
Empty dumpy bags.
Half done Cornish Hedge.
Maybe this is the time to thank everyone who gives me feedback on this blog. I love knowing that people enjoy the blog even though it’s subject matter is pretty mundane. Apparently lots of people are really picky about brownies. Hix Fix cocktail was very popular and that is a little sad as the Hix Restaurant Group is a business that has succumbed to Coronovirus Covid- 19, something I discovered whilst trying to correctly credit them and share a link. So for all of us the derivative version is the best we can get.
Hix Oyster and Chophouse, Cowcross Street, Farringdon, was close to Bart’s Hospital where I worked for a while. Eating there was a huge and rare pleasure. Too bad I never ventured to the Cocktail menu. I think I went there for breakfast so it’s an entirely understandable oversight but still lamentable.
Once again I digress, onward to hedge trimming day 2.
Well, thank goodness I digressed, there will be no denouement on the taming of the Cornish Hedge today. We’ve filled the two new dumpy bags gifted by the builders this morning and still have about 6 metres of it to chop, trim and tidy.
For today’s blog this is the end of the road.
©Google
I’m really not sure how I’ve missed the word . I love a personality test and the NHS where I worked for years was an early adopter of Psychometric Testing . To be honest I’m still not sure that Psychometric testing really helps to make the best decisions if you follow it slavishly, without using instinct, yes I do know about unconscious and indeed conscious bias. This is not the point of this blog. Personality tests, for me, have always been a bit of fun.Personality tests have certainly pointed me the way of being an ambivert but have used way more words and explanations than the simple explanation at the top of this blog. A week or so after learning the word I’m luxuriating in and snuggling right into it. It feels like the warmest cuddly jumper and just like a cosy jumper I can pop my extravert head out anytime I need to, to leave my introvert self. Perfection.
We planted a mix of Oriental Poppies and Field Poppies on the rough ground to mark 100 years since the end of WW1. The land is opposite the village War Memorial.The rough ground is not officially ours but it is the entrance to our back garden. For many years it was the responsibility of the local council to look after it. It is a sad little triangle of land planted with actual road signs. It also bears the posts of old Street furniture and the droppings and scrapings of many years of road surfacing contractors left over cement and tarmac. With Austerity the council has abandoned it. As a growing space it has a mixed aptitude, in the spring it does beautifully with miniature daffodils . In summer weeds do particularly well but so do the poppies. At a high point, it slopes quite steeply up a hill, we have created a little garden between abandoned curb stones and an old but hugely fecund ash tree. The garden like the rest of the triangle is somewhat picky on what it will grow. Currently it supports a very old climbing rose from Hannah’s parents garden. A Christmas tree from a broken home who needed somewhere to rest his roots, some vivid geraniums, a glorious helibore and a few bright Heucheras.Attempts at introducing other things have failed , not exactly expensively, but disapointingly.This week’s Lockdown outdoor project is our annual chore of taming the wild space for the summer. We’ve not quite finished but it was a great reward to have this beautiful poppy this morning.And then there were two.
and then the job was done.
Gardening has become a routine but we are fast running out of places to store lawn cuttings, bush trimmings and weeds. It is weather related rather than supply and demand which governs shopping. Storage of garden waste is soon going to be the factor that controls us. The weather flip opposite of the gardening routine is interior DIY. It’s amazing how much we can achieve just by using stuff we already have in our shed.Curiously Mondays have become our laundry and house cleaning day. This is exactly the routine my grandparents had and it’s one that has crept up on us. In non pandemic times we washed whenever there was a load but with no life beyond home we are producing less washing. House cleaning is not so bad when you are not exhausted from working elsewhere, I can only think of two pre-pandemic routines that we’ve not modified. One is the bedtime walk for the dogs, we never meet anyone even in normal times and that’s not changed, people don’t whizz past us in their cars anymore . No cars means no pollution and what is noticibly more lovely about our evening walks, this spring, is the intensity of fragrance from people’s gardens and the hedgerows.The other unchanged routine is having flowers in the house. The weeks of daffodils have passed and currently we have tulips.
One slightly odd juxtaposition is our fireplace. An interiors psychologist suggested keeping Christmas lights up until Spring as it helps to make darker evenings less dire. Weve stuck with that because a Pamdemic needs light shining on it. Fear not, that is not a Trumpian solution , we just love a bit of twinkle, any excuse. Now we have tulips and Christmas lights,if this goes on it could be sunflowers. In this shot the pandemic gets a mention too. It does not improve with twinkle.
Not to be outdone the garden has some new solar lights to brighten up the evening of whoever walks past the house. Something we do at Christmas time but it seems important to do it now too.
Lola reminds me that there is one other routine that must be adhered to, dog hugs. This is the face of someone who wants me to stop pondering.
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