A gardening deadline

Everybody who knows anything about gardens tells us something we ought to be doing.  In fact, everybody tells us.  I’m just guessing they know something.  Well some of it’s obvious.  Even I know that bushes should not grow out of the guttering.  But I didn’t know that the heat from plants can be enough to set off the security lights, though it is obvious that those particular plants need cutting back.  Well of course the roses up that wall need cutting back, they say.  Are those roses, I think.  We’re not allowed to cut trees over 3.5 metres (or thereabouts) without planning consent, but how to know which of the trees are actually bushes that have got out of hand?  Even Ian is getting into the swing of the talk (not the action): We can’t compost sycamore or horse chestnut leaves.  Where the hell did he learn that?

So, I don’t know what I should be working on in the garden, but I can make a pretty good guess at a lot of it.  I don’t know how to bring happiness to our elderly fruit trees, but I can see that releasing them from the ivy's embrace would be a start.  And I can see that a lot of stuff just needs a good trim.  So then my next dilemma.   Where does it go?  We can bag it and load it into the car and take it to the tip.  We can compost some of it (but what?)  We can burn some of it, I assume.  But I really don’t know what, when or how.

But today I went for a little wander with the girls.  I hadn’t wanted to deliver thank you notes for the flowers and rock cakes till I could speak again, just in case I bumped into any of our welcoming new neighbours and could only whisper to them.  Now I am with voice (in a croaky cackly Hallowe’eny kind of way) so the overdue thank yous could be delivered.  (Of course we met no-one.)  On the green there is the beginnings of a very large bonfire.  “No Fly Tipping” it says, village waste only.  We can dump all our garden waste and contribute to the village bonfire.  Perfect.

So now I have a gardening deadline.  Guy Fawkes' night.  Ruth’s not had a haircut since we left Singapore and Oriana’s never had one – I am not good about trimming anything… but now I have a deadline.  The boxes can wait.  It’s time to have a go at the garden.