March 2021

Pussy Willow

 Well, another month has slipped away and we are officially in Springtime!

I am sure you are all as pleased as I am that the tricky cupboard has finally been finished to my exacting standards!

The finished cupboard!

Originally, I had thought to leave Cheltenham in mid-February but Mum had a minor fall, so I decided to stay for a little longer, as she had to go to and fro to the doctor’s surgery to have a small wound on her arm dressed, which would have been difficult and tiring if she had had to rely on taxis. Initially, the wound did not seem to want to heal so I bought some medical-grade Manuka honey and asked the nurse to apply this before putting on the dressing. We were all absolutely amazed at the results – after two applications four days apart, the wound had started to heal, so much so that a dressing was no longer required! I think I will be adding some of this honey to my First Aid kit in future!

Staying for another couple of weeks enabled Mum and me to take advantage of an improvement in the weather to visit North Cerney Gardens, a few miles from Cheltenham on the way to Cirencester. The gardens are glorious a little later in the year but in February they have a Snowdrop Trail and a lovely display of Hellebores. We had a great morning and enjoyed al fresco tea and cake outside the self-serve cafe in the Bothy, whilst people watching and basking in the warm sunshine.

Mum at North Cerney Gardens

One of the things that contributed to the general 'down' tone of my last blog was the sale of my cottage in Draycott. It had been on and off the market for over a year and, once my tenant moved out in May 2020, I spent a lot of time redecorating it. Once back on the market in mid-July, I had a few viewings and then, finally, at the end of August, I received a good offer, which I accepted. There then followed six months of agonising waiting while my buyer’s solicitor responded slowly to everything and then started raising more and more spurious queries, most of which had already been answered (at least twice in some cases). I began to despair that the situation would ever resolve itself but, on 3^rd March, I finally exchanged contracts and completed on the same day! Phew! The relief of finally stepping away from the cottage, which I had come to refer to as ‘Millstone Cottage’, was immense. This now frees me up to find a new home of my own after 11 years of living in other people’s spaces, first as a WWOOFer for five years, and then as a tenant for the last six. To say I am excited at the prospect is an understatement!

I arrived back in Somerset on 1^st March as I had a dental appointment on 2^nd March to repair the damage that a whole year without an appointment had wrought. Luckily, it was all put right painlessly, and my dentist is such a lovely chap that I don’t mind going to see him.

I decided to give myself the week off to catch up with paperwork relating to the sale of the cottage but started back at various gardening clients the following week. After approximately 3 months of complete inactivity, my muscles objected strongly to this sudden assault. This last week has been worse, if anything, as each client required some digging work!

The first client, on Monday,  was completely new to me and she wants two new herbaceous borders created from what was once part of a field on their farm. My first job was to roughly measure the site and make a sketch – they had already marked out the shape of the bed with rope. I then set to and dug a small trench, following the rope outline, to mark it out so that we could remove the rope and sticks – this took me nearly 3 hours! The larger of the two beds is some 68 feet long and twelve feet wide at its two curved areas. The smaller bed is a mere 40 or so feet long, with a couple of 8 foot deep curves. I have decided to create them using the ‘no dig’ approach, which involves laying cardboard over the entire area, covering it with well-rotted manure (of which they have plenty as they are beef farmers) and then a layer of topsoil. This is a huge task for a 60-something woman who is not yet ‘gardening fit’! One day I will learn to just say ‘No!’.

Part of the new border-to-be

On Tuesday I went to another client who wanted me to dig out an invasive perennial from her herbaceous border. Unfortunately, it had long, bulbous roots and was tangled up with an invasive decorative grass and the almost equally invasive knapweed! I had just about managed to clear the area after three hours of digging, first with a fork to loosen the soil and then with a spade to chop it all up into manageable bits.

On Wednesday I paid my first visit of the year to another client where we had decided, back in the autumn, that the majority of the shrub roses in her herbaceous border, were in the wrong place and needed digging out! Again, it was a battle waged over several hours as the roots go down for what seems like miles and they also throw out runners in all directions! Aagh!

I gave myself Thursday off to recover, and went into Wells to have a Pasty-on-a-Bench with Jeni in her lunch hour. It's lovely to be able to do this again.

On Friday I went back to the new client, armed with a car load of cardboard that I had begged from several sources – it didn’t even cover half of the long border! I then had to start barrowing manure from the JCB bucket to the bed to cover the cardboard before it blew away. After three hours I left the farmer to do a bit more sh*t shovelling and came home.

Laying down the cardboard

The extent of the first car load of cardboard

My 'favourite' occupation!

It’s funny – I thought I was supposed to be retired now!

In other news: I have been out to the lake a couple of times since I came home to see what is stirring in the world of Nature, but it has all been pretty quiet, so far. The primroses by the lake are looking particularly lovely and I expect that buds will be breaking soon, so we have come full circle together, since I restarted these more frequent blogs this time last year. I shall continue to walk and record the changing seasons and also report on my gardening and house-buying efforts!

Some of the beautiful primroses by the lake