Gardening In January

The fish tank and acanthus

I spent this afternoon in the garden.
Thank heavens.
I know making stuff makes me happy. I know that. I know that just playing games and watching TV is like a spiritual famine.
I have knitted and sewn. I have appliqued and quilted. I have built digital houses and made digital cat costumes.
I have built a real house and have for the last couple of years, been gardening.

All of these things make me happy. Leave me feeling fulfilled. And settles my evil, noisy internal dialogue that makes my life so hard.

With hayfever of spring, the rush before Christmas and then the heat, I have been out of the garden for months and the agitation inside my head was building up dreadfully.

Without knowing how hot today was going to be, I decided that I just HAD to get back outside and do something.

The garden looked sad. Weedy and the lawns are not good at all. Heat and dog leaves the lawns very patchy; weedy; yellow or bare; and long and straggly in parts.

I started by taking John's birthday gift voucher to the hardware store and bought 8 bales of hay. And some plants...

It's amazing how much faff there is in just getting started. Hat. Sunscreen. Scissors. Crowbar. Shovel. Trowel. Lawnmower. Gloves. Fuel for mower. Finally I got going and I was hot just from carting things from one end of the house to the other.

The lawn mowing was done without enthusiasm. I can see I am going to have to plan some kind of recovery treatment for the lawn. Hmmm... Later.

Then to the hay. The hay was in compact bales. I cut each one open then spread in a cloud of dirt. So much dirt. I am coughing the stuff up now.

I planted one of the plants, but the rest I will have to think about. Really clueless about where to put them for the moment but they were reduced because they had finished flowering for the time being and I can't resist a bargain.

But after a couple of hours of hard work I was roasted. And burned. I drank litres and litres. And while the doc wanted me to drink 3 litres today, I think if he had known how much I was doing in the  garden, he may have made it 4 litres. Good thing he didn't know.

Anyway, I think the pictures prove it was very worthwhile!

Spring and now