Random witterings!: Blogs are like Buses....

..... None for a year then 2 come along at once!

I'd like to talk about gardening. I have a love/hate relationship with gardening, I love it when it's nice and tidy and hate it when it needs attention. I'm not a very energetic person at the best of times, in fact some days I have very little energy courtesy of Dysthymia, but I have lots of enthusiasm, good intentions and of course, no skill ;)

When my back was at its worst, we paid someone to come in and mow the lawn. He did an OK job but then... he sacked us *sob*. Well not really, he had too many work requests and I guess since we were infrequent clients, it made sense to go for a regular contract.

SO... the lawn threatened to turn into a jungle and the nice borders that were there when we moved in had turned into a wildlife sanctuary. We actually liked that but it was getting so the cat could hide in it and we wouldn't see her. Fun for her I guess, not so much for us trying to get her in at night (I'm a soppy cat mum).

Since I lost 5 stone (so far), my back had been SO much better, I was able to walk without my stick and while it still got grumpy at me, I could do so much more than I could before. Sooo I decided to test it one day and used the lawnmower we'd bought when we first moved in. Yes, we had very good intentions ;)

It went fine, I was stiff and sore the next day but I could manage it (I also lived in fear of mowing over one of the numerous frogs that seem to be attracted to our garden, even tho we don't have a pond).

The lawn was pretty much under control now, although we seem to have about 8 ant nests dotted around the place. Tony was very happy when he managed to drown one of them out. He should blog about that tho ;)

Then came..... THE BORDER WAR!

I wish I'd taken a picture before I strimmed it all, but this one is after they were strimmed but before we launched our offensive.

We decided that us, being the non-outdoor people that we are, minimal maintenance was the way to go and save us having to do all this again in a year. We bought some lawn edging and Tony use a lawn edging tool to create a trench and bury half the edging to create a nice barrier betwixt lawn and border. In the photo you can see our trusty gardening tool that has been superb for the clearing task. I can't remember the proper name for it but I call it THE CLAW!

Then came the clearing of all the grass/weeds/ex-plants/small trees that had taken up residence. THE CLAW made it really easy for me to dig everything up without putting too much strain on my back, using my shoulders and legs instead to supply force. The small cache of bird feathers I came across was a bit disturbing mind you, but I'm sure little miss Bubbles could answer a question about that! Here it is at the halfway stage!

And finally, we put down a layer of mulch into the border to help control weeds etc. We plan to put large pots with plants on the mulch rather than plant anything directly in the ground in the hope it will be easier to maintain. That will have to wait a little while tho - in the meantime I am enjoying it looking neat! Bubbles helps us show it off here.