Garden Gone

The  warm last week was very inspiring. Green things started popping out of the soil in the flower beds around the driveway and patio and my greenish fingers got itchy. 


Husband' fingers apparently won't be itching until Easter weekend. 


I asked him last week when might he have a free weekend to help me out in the garden, Easter was his reply along with, 'anyway, aren't you home most days, you can get on with it.' He does coach hockey to 120+ little children every Sunday for 5 hours so I can see he hardly wants to pull weeds and lug tree branches when he gets in but Saturdays aren't as busy for him. But he still manages to avoid me and the garden.


Just get on with it, that's not the point! I like the company in the garden. I like to do joint projects. And I like filling the big buckets with garden waste until it's too heavy for me to carry and having my husband lug it over to the bonfire pit for me.


So this week I went out with only the dogs for company, who spend the whole time pulling sticks out of the piles I've made and chewing them to pulp, and dug away. I actually dug out a whole flower bed that I have always hated and brought it back to just soil. I don't know what I'll put back in to it but it is very satisfying to see it so clean. Then I had boy and a couple of friends chop down an old dead contorted willow tree which now lets sun into the chicken run. Again, very satisfying especially as they dragged the tree branches over to the bonfire for me. 


Next it was the patio beds. I filled a couple of buckets full of cuttings and old growth, cut the roses back though it's a bit early and raked away. I have been very naughty though and left the buckets for husband to empty for me. Hopefully it won't be Easter before he does it. 


Over the last several years, I have slowly made our garden easier to manage. Dogs, chickens and children do enough damage so less is more now. We used to have a couple of dozen large flower beds with shrubs, perennials, small trees, bulbs, the lot. Now I have just a dozen with easy plants and simple colour. I would love to rip the lawn in the kitchen garden up and have fake turf put down but the family won't hear of it. Just imagine- dark green, lush looking, no cutting, easy to care for, grass. That would be easy. Every year for my birthday I ask for this, fake grass for the back garden and every year I don't get it. 


Now that I have started all the gardening, I hear today that we might have snow again in the South East of England this coming week. I feel a 'I told you so,' from husband coming on. I should have waited until Easter!