Surprise, in a nice way

Spring, perhaps, has actually sprung!

I read a report last Saturday saying that the weather was going to turn around this week, and by the weekend, way hey, we might actually have some decent weather. Like, spring. And today, yes on the radio, they said, 20C (that's 70F) degrees for the weekend. Fingers crossed!


Well, long about 3:00 in the afternoon on Sunday, there was a sudden turn. Sure it was warmer than Saturday out there, but I still felt a chill in the am. I thought, right, I'll do something else, whilst I'm waiting. Washing, for one.




I do love the smell and overall cleanliness of washing hung out on the line. Maybe an old fashioned thing, but here in the UK, a dryer is not a given. So mostly, my washing is hung over radiators during the winter, but in the spring, summer, autumn ... it's out there in the sun! I haven't had this much fun with my washing for a long time!



Gosh I'm sorry, how ... uninteresting.

What I did manage to do, in the end, was a major cleanup of the soon-to-be beautiful (hah) back border. This took much more time than expected, as I don't think I was aware of how much stuff there was back there.




One of the big problems was, that behind the old fence, and now the new fence, someone, or several someones over time, had dumped a load of junk. (And well you may ask, where on earth did that large Cornetto thing come from??).



There is a path from the side road leading up behind all our gardens. One good reason to install a much better fence. I'm not saying that someone actually came up the path to dump all that, stuff (for lack of a more choice word I might use). But all that junk, it used to push on the old fence, at the right, so husband in his wisdom decided that we must get that stuff out of there, bring it out, and cut it up. All well and good. And we had an old fence to cut up too. All good. And he chopped down some of the tree on the left side, which overhangs the part of the fence we didn't actually replace.



This "tree" is actually a Buddleja. Now, I like Buddleja, it has a lovely flower and a lovely smell, and attracts butterflies. But I won't have one in my own garden, because I find them a bit, well, messy. Gosh they grow big, and I've never encountered one quite on this scale. So I'm happy it's there, but not actually in my garden.




There is a lot of stuff lying around there there in that back border.


If I'm completely honest? I was really tired of looking at this out of my kitchen window every morning.



So what I managed to do, by the end of the day, was make this

become this,






with a pile of this

by the side, which we must get rid of, at some point, however we do it. A Hippo Bag is a much more cost effective way of getting rid of this kind of thing than a skip, and that is what we are looking to do. We used to do this, before the lawn was down

But that is out of the question now! And fairly dubious anyway, I realise. Still, the guys loved it ...

By the way, as a side note, the tarpaulin you see has done a brilliant job of keeping the weeds down over the winter. Just a thought should you have a patch you don't quite know what to do with yet, but don't want it to become overgrown again, having spent so much effort rotovating.

In any case, onwards and upwards, I believe!

To any English readers, I would like to wish you all a Happy St. George's Day. It's something I think is right to say, and I wish we could all fly the St. George's Cross without impunity. It's like, Thanksgiving Day for Americans, or Canada Day for, um, Canadians! I'm proud of my own English heritage.

Cheers all!