Day one: I expected the skip to arrive at the crack of dawn so forced my weary bones out of bed before seven o’clock, in time, I thought, to move our cars off the drive. After a breakfast of toast and honey, not mine yet, but soon, I decided to make a start shifting some of the rubbish ready for when the skip did arrive.
It was hard not to be downhearted when I realised just how much there was to move and just how painful my arthritis will be tomorrow.
Good thought: While I’m waiting for the skip I can move anything that I want to keep. First was a huge builder’s gravel bag full of small logs. The remains of a tree that came down in a gale three years ago, Jim sawed some of it up in case we ever bought a wood burner for the house.
Well, we never got the log burner because the house has no chimneys and when we enquired, the cost of building one plus the wood burner itself was astronomical. But, we do have a chimenea on the patio and as all the family are coming next weekend, we like to eat al fresco and it’s getting nippy, those little logs will, at last serve a purpose. I loaded a wheelbarrow with enough to fire the chimenea for a good week and still hadn’t made a dent in the sack full.
I turned my attention to the logs; the remainder of the tree, there was an awful lot of them. Light bulb moment! If I shift them all to the bottom of the garden into a shady corner behind the camellia bush I could build a hedgehog house. They love places like that to bed down for winter and raise their young.
We did see a hedge
hog in the garden several times last summer. He used to wander across the patio after dark and trigger all the security lights. We haven’t seen him this year and really hope he didn’t perish in last winter’s floods.
Talk about getting side-tracked, an hour later and I had a huge pile of logs at the end of the garden. As far as grand designs go, it’s not up to much and I’m not even certain that a homeless hedgehog would be interested. Think I may have to google hedgehog houses and rebuild it.
There was another short hiatus when I stumbled on steps in the garden and decided that I should rebuild them as I had now unearthed all the materials I would need.
By now I am pretty tired and in much need of refreshment and I have a very painful toe where I dropped a big log on it even though I was wearing my industrial strength boots. Oh! and half the morning has gone and still no skip.
My partner in crime aka Jim, made a brew while I phoned the skip company. Between twelve and two I was told. What a pain! I have to stop at one and go into town for an appointment. Oh well we can do what we can up until then.
The brambles and juvenile tree growth definitely needed attention so armed with a machete and feeling as if I was hacking my way through the jungle I set to, taking great care which way I swung it. Traumatic amputations were not in my game plan.
Half way through I discovered an absolute wealth of blackberries, big juicy and just ready for picking. Couldn’t resist them and it would only take a few minutes to collect them.
An hour later I had a good bowlful, washed dried and in the freezer. It’s half past twelve! Where did the morning go?
I dashed into the house to showier and change ready to go into town and as I came down stairs the doorbell rang. “Yep, It’s the skip!”
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