When one thing leads to another….

I am sitting here with aching muscles, reading my last post and shaking my head. Gardening slowing me down? Yeah right! I have spent the last two days at my country house tending to the garden or more correctly I have gone a match against the thistles in what is to become my vegetable garden.

“ Ladies and gentlemen in the right hand corner we have Mrs Handmade, the fierce gardener and in the left hand corner you have the ever multiplying son of a bitch, Mr Thistle! Bong, and the game has started, look how Mrs Handmade is swinging that red spade. Can you see the look on her face folks? Scary! Poow, and Mr Thistle is down….1,2,3,4,5, 6, 7 ….and he is up again. Amazing how that man can keep on coming back….”

After 2500 thistles dug up I lost count. Why was I counting them you may wonder? Well it was preventing me from going insane. In my head I divided the vegetable garden in to squares, attacked each square with my spade counting the damn things while digging them up and thinking - Ha, Ha you suckers, 1 square down 10 to go…. You don’t think that sounds sane at all? You think it sounds more like “they are coming to take me away ha,ha, ho, ho…” ???



Anyway, after 3 hours digging I was so tired I could hardly stand up. I stood with my back and leg muscles aching looking at the now dug and raked little “field” feeling very content thinking I had done a good job. Then something at the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned my head towards the garage wall and froze -Where on earth did all that junk, old bricks and broken drainpipes come from? The mess behind the garage wall really stood out compared to my nice dug garden. So what did I do? I started to clean it up of course. I filled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow with bricks and rubbish and my body was by now screaming 911 but me head said “keep on going you want to see it finished don’t you?” Then under all the junk I found 10 tiny little baby hollyhocks and then I had to replant them and make a border….and wouldn’t it look just beautiful with large stones around the border…..and….

At dusk my husband came out, took me by the hand and led me into the house otherwise I would be there still. Working on with one thing leading to another…..

Take care
Jeanette

PS I saved a whole field with thistles for the "Nettle butterfly" . It´s behind the barn where no one can see them! The thistles that it is. Have to think about the wildlife too!