Make hay while the sun shines

Being a very shallow sort of person I like novelty. So I like beginning work on a new garden. This one is overgrown and needs rescuing. The owner is very aged, but knowledgeable and bright as a button.


The house sits back from the road at the top of a very steep lawn which is mainly moss. Green anyway. The narrow borders have board edges, which is just as well or there would be no end to the lawn and no beginning to the borders. A few Aquilegias struggle. The lawn makes it as far as a double set of French windows under a balcony. It is rather English colonial style and very nice. At the back the slope continues and concrete steps lead up to the first lawn well above the ground level of the house. This first lawn is flattish so one is lulled into a false sense of security, because the next up is mountainside stuff. Small, but steep. I did not even climb as far as the third. The lawnmower has to be hauled up many steps and the cuttings carried down. The grass was generally of hayfield standard. About two feet high. The mower coped with the length, but a small hover would have been preferable on the slopes. Or a goat. My mower does not lend itself to being dropped and hauled on a gradient.


The first challenge was the power point which is above the door of the outside loo. A most sensible spot, but I could not reach it! Eventually I found a good sized flowerpot and climbed upon it. Resourceful, I felt.


There are plenty of shrubs, but all needing work, and herbaceous borders are full of bindweed, grass and other goodies. In the first visit I could only reduce the grass height and remove a large dead Photinia near the front gate. A weekly visit would be desirable, but I am behind because of the rotten weather, so I cannot see that I can do more than once a fortnight.


I have taken a couple of photographs to cheer me on - I like to see what I have done - and it will be good to see the garden emerge. In fact I was intending to post one of the pictures, but I have spent some time trying to remember how to transfer them from mobile to computer. Then I lost them. They have to be in here somewhere, but I will have to wait for a son to come home. Maybe they are lost forever.
The aged lady seemed pleased with the first efforts, but I did not get a cup of tea.
And such things are very important.