Single Parenthood and I: Tales From The End of The Garden
We're past Easter, so it's time for me to take a step out into the garden and survey a mess which looks surprisingly like my brain feels, at the moment.
Part of the deal when you embark on parenting is that you have to learn how to allocate your time. Work is important. Relationships are important. Housekeeping is important. And when you’re a plate-spinner such as I, you have to learn to do the amount of work in the right places, and the right times.
My house isn’t perfect, but I do what I can. Once a week, I have a big three to four hour clean. I have a list for this, and locked in my head is the fact that I will also do one other job that I spotted during the week that I realised needs to be done. We’ve been here five years now and it definitely needs a lick of paint. That may be a job for the summer.
But then there’s the garden. Or rather, gardens. I’ve not been able to do anything to them for almost two years. The front garden is small but busy. There’s a hedge between us and the neighbours on the left which I trim two or three times a year, but then there’s also… the rest of it. The bins are by the front door, but right next to them is a furious Chinese rose bush that at least keeps me on my toes when I’m putting them out in the morning, and there’s a huge bush of some description which stretches from the right-hand side in.
It is, put simply, barely-managed chaos. I bought a few bags of flint chippings and put them down there a couple of years ago, but wild grass only grew between them even so. By last week there were wild flowers growing there, and that was the impetus for me to step in and finally take some action.
The front garden has now been tamed for the time being, though I clearly need to drop fifty quid that I don’t have at present on more flint chippings to finish it off. I’d like to get this done, but the front garden is now completely full with sacks from the back garden, so further work there is on hiatus until the council pick them up.
In comparison with the back garden, the front garden looks as though it’s managed by Hyacinth Bucket. The back feels like a full-time job on its own, but it’s one I haven’t been able to address myself for the last couple of years. And now I have turned my attention to it, I’ve come to realise just how much work it needs. It needs a lot of work. Oh God, so much work. And of course, I have to do it on my own.
My back garden is long and relatively narrow, and it essentially comes in three sections. At the near end is a small patio, a couple of chairs and what was clearly formerly an outdoor toilet which has now been turned into a cupboard containing the washing machine and the boiler. There’s also a big pile of stuff that needs to be taken to the tip. I managed twelve bags of that last week; getting rid of the rest of it will do wonders for my ailing mental health.
Then there is a long patch of grass with some trees along one side, one of which I’m certain is dead yet somehow still manages to grow and which now hangs like a canopy over the entire garden. On the other side is a lot of ivy, hanging over anything it can in the style of a man from Birmingham’s hair. The dying tree has aggressive branches which feel like an old woman’s finger jabbing into your midriff as you walk past it. There’s also a huge holly bush, of which I have no recollection of having been there a year or two ago.
And then there’s the far end. There’s another hedge that runs the length of the right-hand side of the garden which also need trimming, another bit of patio and… the shed. I once checked the tenancy agreement and on it the shed was listed as “dilapidated” when we moved in, in 2020. Well, it’s destroyed, now. We put stuff in it years ago because we needed to, and when it came down it did so in a storm, destroying everything that had been inside it. All the contents need chucking in a skip, and the shed itself needs clearing.
In truth, tackling the shed has become a major psychological hurdle for me. Even looking at the state of it has been a bit too much for me recently. But getting it done will be good for me, and it may not even take as long as I’m fearing at present. But this—coupled with the fact that I’m starting a new job which will take at least 40 hours out of my week—is the reason why I’ve set that date at the end of next month. This is a long-term job.
I’m up at 5.30 in the morning because I’ve been sleeping like it all week, but I could at least get a cup of coffee down, do some exercises, and be out in the garden with a job to do. I hack and I slash. I slash and I hack. I fill even more brown garden sacks with leaves, branches and sticks. I manage to cut my hands despite wearing gardening gloves. And over the course of the next three hours or so the garden starts to reveal itself to me again. There’s even sunlight shining on patches of it by the time I sit down to collect myself.
I’m writing this while watching the Bournemouth vs Manchester United match. I start a new job next week, so these full days that I can take out to attend to the garden will be as thin on the ground as the grass in my back garden after a year with no sunlight. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m enjoying it. I haven’t been enjoying much recently, across the board.
But it does give me a sense of achievement to see it changing as I work on it. And that means more to me than almost everybody reading this will understand. So okay kid, you can have the living room TV for another hour on the PlayStation. Do I really want to see Spurs get routed by Liverpool? Not much. If anybody needs me, I’ll be out the back.
Image by jacqueline macou from Pixabay.
Congratulations on the new job Ian! Anything you can say about it? Or want to say about it
God I share your pain. Due to giving over my time to dad's ailing health, charity long distance walking and my bloody job, my back garden was left to its own devices for two years. Spent 3-4 hours a day over the easter school holiday trying to sort it 😬