It does go on a bit I'm afraid, but at least I don't post very often at the moment!
Here is a picture of the end of my garden, as it was until May this year.
With the help of my sister and BIL, we spent a weekend clearing and dumping. In June/July came the shed purchase and erection. (see my July posts for quite a lot about sheds) {if you really are interested that is}
Since then either I've been away from home, or its been too hot, or too wet to garden. (Or I've been too busy playing games on the computer/gloating over vintage buttons/making tassels).
Recently, however, I've back in the garden, digging, levelling, clearing rubble, planning, sitting in my shed.
This is just some of the rubble I've dug up. I suspect this is the site of an air raid shelter. No interesting historical finds though.
As we don't have a car to get it to the dump, this rubble is being surreptitously sneaked a little at a time into the wheelie bin.
And this is what the end of the garden looks like now.
My most recent excavations have been around the corner which houses the compost bin, which used to look like this
but now looks like this.
I'm so very pleased with myself! and now the side of the neighbours (fabulous) shed is accessible, giving me some ready made little shelves. Just waiting for embellishment.
So I'm thinking about what to do with/in this little corner. A climbing plant of some kind in the very corner, definately. Possibly a mirror, if I find something suitably garden-shabby-chic at the boot fair?
I will also be putting in a little frog pool. We quite often see frogs in the garden, and I like to encourage the little guys. For their own charm, not solely for their slug/snail-eating habits. I think all my clearing out has been effectively a process of eviction for one little frog I've been seeing, so I will be sinking a nice glazed pot into the corner, somewhere near the shed, and filling it with rocks, water and plants to give her somewhere to bask. (A great idea [I hope!] from Great Gardens for kids - which has some really lovely garden suggestions, whether or not you have children).
Feel free to stop reading now if you've had enough, this might go on a bit, but all this work has a curious resonance for me with whats been going on in my life over the past year/18 months. If you've been reading this blog for a while and/or know me personally, you'll know that my primary relationship - and my life in general - have been in trouble - and the work in my garden is quite an apt metaphor for whats been going on. I've been thinking a lot about/while digging.
This part of the garden was filled with rubbish and rubble, mouldering and neglected, with chunks of secret dereliction hiding under the soil, making it hard and inhospitable to growing things - apart from unwanted weeds and painful nettles, flourishing and working their tangled roots down into the ground.
It was a forgotten eyesore which I tried to put out of my mind and live around.
It seemed beyond my resources to deal with.
It was wasted space.
It was getting worse, sprawling further, a growing gaping repository for detritus, junk, the unwanted, broken, forgotten.
Hopeless.
NOW
the ground is clear. Heaps of rubble and broken glass have been dug up, examined, sorted, disposed of - some of it dumped, some of it salvaged.
Some of these discoveries, I could have predicted. Some of them were more unexpected and surprising.
As work progresses, there may be more to unearth - which I will deal with as it comes and when I find it.
There is space.
I can imagine possibilities for building, reconstruction, creativity, growth.
I can sit alone in my shed and think. I take time for myself.
I've had some help, but a lot of this activity has been solitary.
It feels as though I've been doing a lot of work by myself.
and
not everyone who lives here has the same visions or expectations of what might be possible in this space.
But there has been such a transformation already. There is such potential. I am pretty hopeful.
Most of the time.
Maybe by next summer this space will full of green and flowers.
and frogs.
To be honest, I wrote this a few days ago, and feel less hopeful at the moment. But I'm sure I'll be hopeful again soon. :o)
