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Over the summer, I’ve been thinking how nice it would be to have somewhere to sit out in the sun. It takes me a while to remember that, in theory, we do have somewhere to sit out in the sun: the garden. In practice, the garden is a wilderness.
The first year we lived here, my excuse for not doing anything with it was that I was waiting to see what grew. This year, it’s probably not an even vaguely valid excuse. So I decided I’d do something about it.
Preparation
I went to Homebase and bought some gardening tools of mass destruction: a digging fork, a shovel, a pair of secateurs with anvil action for cutting woody stems, a pair of secateurs with scissor action for cutting green stems, a pair of gardening gloves, a thing to prune trees with, a saw and a wheelbarrow.
The saw is different to the DIY saw I bought earlier in that it’s designed to cut green wood as opposed to cutting seasoned wood, like my DIY saw.
I’ve never owned a wheelbarrow before. I asked the man in Homebase if they had any — I couldn’t see any., He asked how much was I willing to spend. Given that I had no idea how much the average wheelbarrow cost, I couldn’t answer. I ended up buying the cheapest one, which had to be put together by the user.
I put the wheelbarrow together the next day. I had to swap the bit the wheel joins on to round because I put them on the wrong way round at first. Oops.
Gardening
My favourite gardening tools have always been secateurs. I took the scissor-action secateurs and applied them to the overgrown dill plants. I don’t like dill, so I wasn’t sad to see it go. I didn’t like the aniseed stink that filled the air on cutting, though. Old dill stems turn woody when they die and snap easily, so no tools are needed to remove them. I’m left with stumps where the roots are. I intend to dig them up with my digging fork. I hope they’re not really deep.
Thwarted
I went to put the cuttings in the green bin, but it was nearly full. The lady next door is clearing out her garden a little bit at a time, and frequently fills up her own bin. We, along with some of the other neighbours, let her use our bins. She’d clearly been using our bin. Once I put my dill cuttings in it, along with some shrubbery cuttings, it was full.
Not having any handy flexitubs to put any excess garden waste into, I had to stop then. (I could use the ones I got for my room, but beasties.)
