Weeks 10-12 review, plan for week 13

[rmc28]

Week 10 (beginning 18/4): No real progress. I did decide to use the prettiest glitter pens from the stationery stash for my language learning rather than bog-standard biro: they run out fast, but ... my notes are all glittery, and the pens were bought to be used.

Week 11 (beginning 25/4): Tiny progress; took some inspiration from colleague who was doing "10 minutes weeding a day" and reported it making a big difference. I think I did two sets of that over the week.

Week 12 (beginning 2/5): Better progress! I was prompted by garden-waste collection resuming this week (after being stopped for a couple of months, it will now happen every 4 weeks), and trying to find something more useful than pacing around the house to do during my required hourly keyboard breaks. So I started Wednesday morning by setting up gardening gloves, shoes and overclothes by the back door, and spent 5-10 minutes in the hour pulling weeds, and probably another half-hour at lunchtime, and that filled up the garden-waste bin! I got stung horribly by nettles, and the only antihistamine cream we had was in the expired boxes (that I sorted out way back in checks notes week 6), but it tried it anyway and it seemed to help.

Thursday I did the same again, but this time started by clearing the way to the abandoned compost bins in a corner and started filling them up too. I spent even longer on this after the end of my work day, and eventually concluded hand-weeding the whole garden was a stupid idea and it was time to find the electric strimmer in the garage.

Friday was a day off, and I set up to use the strimmer, and made some satisfactory progress until it started intermittently failing (???) and emitting smoke (eek!) and I discovered there was a metal screw rolling around loose inside the motor compartment (eek! eek!). So I unplugged it hastily and had it cool down and then took a closer look at it, but it was beyond my ability to repair.

So I've put it with the stash of broken electrical things in the garage. (We've a bunch of things we can't put in kerbside waste collection and have to be taken to the Household Waste Recycling Centre, so I tend to pile it up until we have enough to justify renting a car or van to do the trip - but the HWRC is closed for now anyway.) I did some review-reading and shopping and have a Which? Best Buy electrical strimmer on its way due to arrive tomorrow.

Plan for Week 13

• Continue clearing the garden (many subtasks here)
• Agree with spouse what to do next (basically: mulch or turf the cleared areas; pros and cons to both which I won't rehearse now)
• When we are agreed and I'm confident of having the ground clear when it arrives, order whatever we agree on for delivery. (I am trying to avoid the trap of not being able to lay mulch/turf when it arrives, so it sits around and turns into a Giant Expensive Pile Of Guilt.)

As is probably apparent, I am so not a skilled or experienced gardener. I just want an outdoor space that is not actively unsafe for the children to play in (no banks of waist-high nettles or brambles, etc), and I'm reminding myself that achieving that, even if just for this summer, will count as SUCCESS.

Comments

[illariy]

Very cool that you are now using up your pretty pens! I love finding uses for previously unused items. I also need to declutter or use up my stationery items, especially my stash of washi tapes and stickers, which have both sat unused for a long time.

Lots of stuff to do in the garden! I wish you the best for achieving the goal of creating a safe place for teh kids to play in. Seems like a lot of joy could come from that!

[hooloovoo_42]

Well done on making progress in the garden. If you have useful compost bins, they are definitely a good thing. Try and avoid putting things like dandelion heads in there, as they turn into seed heads and will just live in the compost, or couch grass/bindweed, as that will also live on and spread if you use the compost elsewhere. Nettles are good in compost - and if you have a (spare) water butt, you can put them in and make a nettle feed for the garden.

And yay! for the glitter pens.

[nanila]

I am so happy about the garden waste collection and the dumps being allowed to reopen. Because of the intensity of our activity around the house, the brown bin filled up the first week of lockdown and there are 4 giant building waste size bags full of cuttings that need disposal.

It sounds like you've got into the rhythm of it now. I hope the results are satisfying!

[rmc28]

I just checked and our HWRCs are opening tomorrow for essential visits only:

"Residents should only visit a Household Recycling Centre if essential and if you cannot minimise your waste, store it at home safely, or use alternative kerbside or bulky waste collections."

So as we can keep storing the various bulky stuff in the garage indefinitely I guess we will continue to do so for now.

Handweeding the garden was a very slow way of tackling it, but it was kind of meditative as a keyboard break activity and it did mean I spent a lot of time ambling back and forth across the garden during which I figured out all the subtasks for clearing it and the options for what to do when it's cleared. The strimmer should arrive this afternoon so I should be able to make progress again then.

Also Tony's stance turns out to be that I can do what I like to the garden so long as I do it and he doesn't have to, which simplifies my planning process considerably :-)