With all my admin up to date and my projects updated, I decided I needed a break from the laptop and some fresh air. I was also keen to continue clearing the side garden that we started yesterday.
Karen had a look of surprise, or maybe shock, on her face as she got out of the car to be greeted by me wielding a hedge cutter at the jungle that had regrown down the side of the house.
“Wow, I didn’t expect to see you’d started on that today,” she said.
“I was in the mood, the weather is ideal for tackling this job, and it needs to be done before these shrubs start growing in the house!” I wasn’t joking, either. When we moved in eighteen months ago we literally had branches growing through the open windows into the utility room and under the roof tiles. I’d run out of excuses for not doing this job. If I put it off much longer we wouldn’t get in or out of the back door.
I was making an attempt on the final frontier of our garden, a forgotten area inhabited only by severely overgrown and mostly dead shrubs, vines and ever-increasing trees that were far too big to be near the house.
A year ago we fought our way through knee-high grass to what was originally the lawn area. Armed with brush cutters and strimmers, we cut our way through waist-high stinging nettles and brambles to the wood and discovered a glasshouse. It housed nothing but a 20-foot tree growing out of the broken roof.
A few minutes later Karen emerged from the house kitted up with gloves and eye protection. “Can I have a go with the chainsaw?” she asked. The little saw was hers anyway. I reluctantly handed it over. I was enjoying myself, and I knew that if I wasn’t cutting I’d be clearing up the debris, the boring part.
I did contemplate a fire, but thought it was too close to the house. My track record with bonfires is huge infernos where nothing ever grows again for the next 50 years.
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