I’m stiff. My back hurts. My hands feel stiff and protest when I extend my fingers out. Just OW! But, I have to go back to the garden, I need to see my second (of 3) semi circular flower beds get created. It’s a lot of digging up of grass but it’s gotta be done! The grass needs to be taken up by the root, so the hoe-pick goes in quite a way and pulls up a chunk of turf. Can I call it turf if it’s just the wild grass that grows everywhere?
It wasn’t a particularly nice task, but it got done. And, as usual my hubby calls out to me “Having fun? Enjoying yourself?” He feels he’s funny, huh. Sigh. No, I hate it. But the bed got done. Yay! Just one more to go now, and it’s the middle sized one so no problem right?
Wrong. I hit rocks. Lots of rocks. And I hit some reed roots. I don’t know the names of these particular reeds but they grow in wet compact soil and they’re a total nuisance. The only way to kill them is to get them up by their roots and spray the lot. We have dogs so we don’t like using any of those weedicides or poisons, so I’m hoping by digging them up by their roots so early in the growing season I’ll still get rid of them. It’s hard work, though. The roots are so dense the hoe-pick is bouncing back to me. And I’m not a weakling. I can handle a lot. Just not this at this moment. I was done with this task for the day.
But, the sun was shining and it was early in the afternoon. I looked around. Oh, we do need to dig a drainage ditch nearby, might as well make a start and win some points with the hubby for starting his task.
I get excited when I can picture results. So I switched my hoe pick for a spade (which is different to a shovel ya know – I also learned this a few years ago!) and got cracking.
After eyeballing where the natural slope was in the area, I knew where I was going to dig and I started from the end and worked my way up to the clogged up area. Yes, in rural gardens we have these issues…. Sigh.
So I dug. And I dug. I hate digging with a spade. There’s a lot of strength needed to move the lump of soil. I had the strength but it’s a thankless task. And it progresses quite slowly as you have to maintain width and depth carefully and maintain the downward slope.
I made it quite close to the clogged up area and decided to give up for the day. I was fed up. My hubby uses the word scunnered quite often. “Stop and come inside” he often says, “you’ll scunner yourself.” I keep this in mind, because I remember plodding on last year and indeed ‘scunnering’ myself. I got so fed up of the task that when it was done I had no pleasure in the accomplishment, just exhaustion and fed-upness (like my word?).
I’ll keep you posted with how this plays out. But I tell ya, this was not how my day was supposed to go. I had absolutely zero intention of digging a ditch and working in smelly clogged up water and decomposing reeds and grasses when I woke up this morning.
Me and my great ideas.
