I don't want to be living here. I don't think it's good for my mental health to feel so insecure. I don't think that the cats are happy here. I feel too far from the part of Norfolk that feels like home, and too far from Trouble.
And yet, when I'm gardening it does feel like home. I can't help but make future plans for it.
When we moved into the house here, the garden hadn't been touched in years. The lady who lived here said that the only time she entered the garden was to bury her cats. (Thankfully I've not discovered them yet). The garden, although fairly straight, is kind of in five parts.
1) There's an adequate sized lawn. It's been undermined by moles, so you nearly lose a foot when walking across it. It did have rose bushes going mad in the middle, but we've removed all but one of these.
2) A large triple sycamore completes the lawn.
3) Beyond the sycamore there are thirty foot fur trees on either side of the garden (not on our side of the fence). The height of the trees means that this part of the garden is almost completely shaded. Either side, along our fences, the ground had nothing but a few weeds growing. Someone put some raised beds along one side at some point, which had nothing but nettles in them.
4) There was a portion of lawn in the middle, but it was (and still is) very dominated by weeds. Giant thistles, nettles, hemlock, creeping Charlie, ground ivy, dandelions, dock leaves, goose grass, and daisies. It also had a giant unidentified bush taking up half of the potential space.
5) The very end of the garden is completely barren. You could fit two green houses there, so it's a frustrating waste of space. We can't put greenhouses or sheds there, because the entire garden has cat proofing around it to prevent the cats getting out. If they can jump on and then off, outbuildings, it would defeat the object of the cat proofing.
So what do I see when I look at that mess? A challenge. A project. A beauty that I want to harness.
So, last summer I started the rehabilitation of the garden. I have a willing helper in Blob. He pulled out the rose bushes and demolished the bush for me. I sat on the ground trying to extricate the creeping crawling weeds from the little grass there was.
Along the sides, where it was almost totally barren, we pulled up the weeds, dug it all over, put down weed supressing membrane, and started planting. On one side of the garden the side bed is covered in slate. On the other it's covered in bark.
After the first year we've learnt that a lot of things don't survive here, even with a good feed and their own bed of compost, so I've been researching how to approach it. I've ordered some plants that should be happy here, which will be arriving next week.
The plans I have for the garden:
- obviously, plant up the beds we've created.
- where the bushes were, build a gazebo from reclaimed wood.
- allow nettles and weeds to grow in two of the raised beds, so that local insect and bug life is still ok here, but also so that those plants are contained.
- use the earth from the other raised beds to even out the garden where there are holes, etc.
- the back of the garden where nothing will grow, somehow turn into a place to relax, incorporating a fire pit.
- throw woodland wild flower seeds all over the top lawn.
I'm the one that potters out there each day, sitting on the ground pulling up weeds, listening to the birds, falling asleep at 3pm (I don't know why it's the same time each day). I'm also the one bossing Blob around in order to get the rest of my plans done 😁
So far this year I've mostly planted bricks. The beds look far better with the brick borders. Not that I've finished yet. I could have probably finished today, but I figure that when I'm no longer treating worms with respect, I should go do something else. Like write a rambling blog post that no one will read.
What a mess!
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