Ok so this blog is supposed about things that make me feel good or allow me to spend time with my family. Well gardening doesn’t make me feel good, I’m bad at it and I seem to kill more plants than I grow. That said, if I keep the garden reasonably pruned it let’s me spend more time outside playing with my kids, or even better lets me send them outside to play while I get on with other jobs. I think the best that can be said about gardening from my point of view is that doing it lets me do other rewarding things later on.

Last week I gave the garden it’s first “haircut” of the year. I started by cutting back the hedge on the road side – this makes no difference to family life but I’m really hoping it will stop the people touting for business door to door from continually knocking to ask if I want them to cut the hedge for me. True to form it didn’t go too well, the cordless hedge trimmer died after 15 minutes and I had to do the rest by hand. Now you’re probably sat there thinking just get a plug in one, here’s the problem. We live on a corner plot, the front garden is probably twice the size of the back and is a triangle with the longest side running along the roadside. The previous owners were devoted gardeners and left us with a beautiful hedge and many many shrubs and bushes. While I would love to have a plug in hedge trimmer, the cable would need to be about 60 meters long to reach to the end of the hedge.

After the hedge was done (and the sweeping up which I REALLY REALLY hate) I had a go at the lawns. We have 2 at the front and neither had been touched since last year. I dug up the huge nettle that appeared last year and the little ones that were spreading from it and generally tried to make the garden look less abandoned.

I’m quite pleased with the results. I still need to cut back the hedge on the garden side and trim all the bushes but I can let the kids go out now without feeling too guilty. As always, when I attack the garden it attacks right back. My nails are shredded and my arms are covered in scratches in spite of the gloves. I think this is one of my main dislikes of gardening; the destroying of my hands.

Anyhow that’s my moan about the garden done. Thankfully the back garden is paved and easier to manage. The back corner is the only planted bit that gives me problems. There’s an ornamental grass that grows huge every year, and a Wisteria that looks beautiful when it’s in flower but drops masses of petals, seed pods and leaves every single year. The only other problem I have with the back garden has nothing to do with gardening. It has to do with small people. 3 days ago I came out of the house after doing some jobs to find my son happily throwing sand from the sandpit over the entire garden. When I told him to stop he turned to his sister (who wasn’t anywhere near he sand) and told her very firmly “No more throwing!” We spent the next hour sweeping up 😀