I had a sad afternoon in the back garden at the weekend. It was bitterly cold and spitting with rain and it was one of those November afternoons that seems to be longing for dusk from 2 o clock onwards. We were cutting things back, chopping things down, retrenching.
When we moved in here 21 years ago, the garden was covered in brambles and nettles, and a couple of collapsed sheds lurked in the undergrowth. Dave cleared it and landscaped it, and I planted it. For ten years I worked long hours in the garden and it was full of fruit and flowers. Nothing fancy, but it was fecund and colourful.
Then, some years later, although I still loved gardening, there were other things I wanted to do, and we grassed over a couple of borders.
Now I'm in my late sixties (oh horror) I have so much less energy than I did even ten years ago and I want to keep cycling and walking as well as gardening, and something's gotta give. Dave usually mows the lawns and clips the hedges,
but he doesn't know a crocosmia from a sedum so he couldn't do any more, even if he wanted to. So we're going to grass a large part of the back garden and plant a couple of fruit trees.
I'll still have the border in the back with the amazing crocosmia lucifer
but nothing beyond it.
If we grass the back, though, the large strawberry patch will have to go, and I'm not quite ready to relinquish it yet. Not for my sake, but for Dave's. In a good season I pick a kilo a day and he eats most of them. It seems mean to dig it up because the weeding is so arduous, but he insists it's fine. Watch this space.
We're keeping a couple of blackcurrant bushes, whose maintenance is minimal, and the front garden will stay as it is.
I feel sad, but now I think about how much I've got left, I feel better. Blogging is definitely good for my health.
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