Over the last couple of days I have been clearing some bushes from the front garden. The first day I used my hedge trimmer. That obviously meant that the bits were quite small and it took as long to clear up afterwards as it did to cut the bushes down. I then used secateurs to cut them down as low as I could to make digging out the roots a bit easier. I was up before 6am the next morning and took the 14 bin bags of clippings to the local woods. It obviously took a few trips. I found a good spot that was out of the way to empty the bags out.
There were 2 bushes left. I decided to make life a little easier for myself and went straight in with the secateurs to leave bigger branches that I could pick up and carry loose to the woods. That just left the root clumps. There were around 10. I left the ones near the tree until last as I figured the roots might be tangled with the tree roots. The first one must have taken 30 or 40 minutes to dig out. it just didn’t want to move. I had forgotten that I broke the garden fork last year when I made a space to bury one of the cats. The fork would have made life a little easier although I have a pretty good spade with a sharp blade. After wrestling with that first one I needed break. The hot weather is fantastic if you’re sitting out in it but not ideal for anything physical. The next one came out in about 20 seconds! Maybe this wasn’t going to be that hard after all. That proved to be the only easy one. The last 2 were closest to the tree. The ground was like concrete plus there seemed to be a lot of stones around there. I was close to giving up. My back was ready for a rest. I tried putting 4 or 5 buckets of water on the bigger of the two root clumps. That worked like a charm. Both the remaining clumps came out relatively easily after a soaking.
I had drunk a lot of water during the day but had been working in the sun for too long and started with a pretty bad headache. Sue went to bed around 7pm as she is working on Friday. She always goes to bed early before a shift but it has been earlier than normal recently. Most people round here aren’t getting up for work and are in their gardens until the early hours.
I felt like shit and laid on the sofa. I must have fallen asleep pretty quickly. I was woken at 8pm when the Key Worker Clap started. Some prick sets a firework off each week. My dogs used to be fine with fireworks until the local school started using bigger and bigger fireworks in their November 5th displays. They literally shake the house and after 3 years of that the dogs are pretty sensitive to loud bangs. Charlie always barks at the noise and then comes to us for comfort. Molly isn’t really a barker (although barks in her sleep!) . Charlie’s bark woke me and he was trying to get on the sofa. Molly was laying full length on top of me licking my face. She isn’t the smallest of dogs!
I decided to stay on the sofa so that I didn’t disturb Sue’s sleep. When I am knackered I tend to snore a lot. She didn’t have a great day yesterday and I copped for it. Quite a bit of abuse was thrown my way. All quite nasty and unwarranted. She apologised later ( to make herself feel better). I told her it was OK, I understood and it didn’t matter (to make her feel better). I guess I’ll just get over it. She is off work for 2 weeks after Friday. At least I now have space in the front garden to bury her if necessary. The back garden’s full of cats.
Stay safe.
