It’s not very easy for someone with a wonky back and a gimpy leg to write about antics in the wild jungle of the Scottish outdoors. But, interestingly, I do have things to recount from the past week!
It all started very randomly. I got a call from the hubs, who was across the road at mom’s house, saying he needed another pair of hands for a few mins to hold some planks of wood. He was in the process of repairing mom’s garden shed. The past winter had left its mark by sucker-punching quite a large hole into the belly of the shed.
When I got down to mom’s, I saw that the hubs had removed the old cladding from an entire side of the shed. A patch-up job wasn’t going to work for him, and he also wanted to reinforce the floor and put protectants and sealants on the rest of the shed. He was also making a new window. It’s good to have a professional joiner, house builder and furniture maker in the family, right?
So, why was I needed?
Ah, there it was! The problem.
The side of the shed that had to be rebuilt was almost next to the fuel tank for the house. There was an awkward niche at one shed corner that was quite narrow and would pin anyone entering into one position. There was no way the hubs could hold planks of siding, check the level and the joints and fix them into place on his own. So, TAA-DAAH! Enter the gimpy savior!
I had come down with my gardening gloves and I was excited to be helpful. Yeah, there was nothing glorious about this help that was needed from me. In the beginning, I was required to help lock in and hold the cladding (almost hidden in this awkward niche) while the hubs went along the wall affixing it to the shed frame. Gah! Because my back can’t hold me up in a bent forward position – think about the position that you find yourself when you’re washing your face at the bathroom basin, or loading things into the oven – my shot at being the rustic, glamorous help at my version of extreme makeover home edition, was basically me on all fours, heaved over planks of siding. I must have looked like a constipated toddler hoarding a toy in the sandpit. Joyful.
Anyway, I did have down time during this process. While the hubs was cutting lengths of timber and siding I decided to weed the area in front of mom’s garden shed. It’s an area of stone chips with stepping stones leading between mom’s kitchen door and the door of the shed. There was the usual summer flora sprouting proudly in this grey, stony environment. Mom had asked, a few days prior, about the best way to get rid of these ‘weeds’ but it all seemed a bit awkward for her to do while sitting on a garden stool. So, I decided to pitch in and help with that in between my crouching tiger-hidden dragon-esque construction duties.
During this happy eureka moment of putting myself to good use, and surprising my mom with a task getting done, I somehow forgot that I can’t bend very well. Of course, by the time I had remembered this I was crouched over the ground, bent over myself, waging war with the flora in my sight. My entire focus was on my thumb and index finger of my right hand – as that’s all that was needed to pull these superficially growing verdant stalks out of the stony field – and not a whisper of a thought for the position I had found myself or my inability to maintain certain positions for any length of time.
Needless to say, disaster was speedily approaching.
After a few moments of rolling backwards onto my bum and using my arms in any way I could (thank you arm exercises!) I managed to extricate myself from my stupidity and get back to my construction role when I heard the sawing stop. In the next break I made a snap decision. It would not be glamorous, or even sightly for that matter, but there was a long piece of cardboard nearby and, if I was going to win this war I had waged then you know I was going to be comfortable doing it.
Yes.
Yes, indeedy. I sure did pull out that cardboard and place myself prone, lying fully on it. I was now targeting the shallow roots of the milk thistle and all-heal along with the errant clumps of grass and lawn daisies dotted all over the place. I won’t lie – it hurt my heart a little to pull out the all-heal and milk thistle but mom didn’t want them there and I don’t know how to use them, medicinally or herbally, so out they came!
Mom was happy and surprised to see her stone chipped area nice and clear. I was happy to get home and comfort myself with some coffee. In fact, I was so happy to have been outside and hands-on (as opposed to sitting at my workstation doing salary-earning work) that I decided to go outside later that same afternoon and pick blackcurrants. Picking happily, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t pick everything from a nice comfortable position.
Oh good grief! Guess who had blackcurrant bushes that were about waist high! Guess who had to bend to pick these tiny fruit that don’t grow from the outer edges of leafy branches but instead most inconveniently from the central stalk! Guess who shouldn’t even try to bend like that because of floppy-back syndrome? Yeah. Obviously, I did what any sane person would do in this circumstance – I semi-squatted and frog-walked within the semi-squat to the side around the bush as I needed.
Totally unglamorous, but there you go. I definitely get points for being stubborn enough to not give up. I totally won the battle with the Scottish outdoors that day. Definitely not the war, as I was attacked a couple of days later by flying things… but I think that’s a story for another time.
I need more comfort coffee after reliving the embarrassing antics to write this! I guess my chances of getting on the BBC’s Gardener’s World as an expert have just gone from maybe 1 in a billion to minus a lot in many billions. Gah.
