———–To provide the full story, the following is an archive post written before we moved to the Breens and the day before the planned prep day in the garden to get a head start
Fri 9 March 2007
This is a pre-breens outdoor kick-off day entry. The day before we embark on a gardening life at a new house. I have excitedly bought a wheelbarrow, soil testing kit, some twine, a tough bucket and some g-clamps (for woodwork bench). Tonight I will be collecting a loaned woodwork bench (now my second in 3 days) and a power tool including wood saw attachment.
It’s a very exciting prospect for me – just generally and selfishly but it also is a potential healing and rewarding/satisfying future for Ema and the girls in the family. Where we have been since I joined the ladies in life we have not had any outdoor life at the family house. The current place is my domain in terms of gardening, although the girls we have got to playing out there after the first year. It’s really not appealing to Ema in the slightest.
Erin loves it but can’t go out for much at all due to safety fears or sheer impracticality.
So the vision of all contributing, all enjoying, 80% of time spent outdoors in the summer months is just a near-idyllic dream. Of course, I expect that the girls interest in any work will wane to absolute minimal levels within minutes of starting tomorrow, and that the practicalities of looking after
Erin plus her general back health will limit what Ema can do. But even with this, and coming back to the excitement I feel for my own activities foreseen – It could a very bright outlook.
The book I’m reading – Alloted time – about a depressed divorcee and his mate deciding to get an allotment and start from scratch (including knowledge) is very funny, close to my mindset and position and hopeful quite educational. It’s funny to be in the place where I am today – about to start tomorrow (weather dependant) – which matches pretty closely to the place in the book where I am or have just read. The author is also quite reflective and quite hippy at times about the lifecycle and natures forces that you get close to or work with. Again – another excitement factor for me and I hope I can provide musings in the same style.
I must remember to take pictures before I start anyway for the ‘before’ shots and the ‘during’. Wish me luck.
Greenish antics of Nige to grow, build and make a gr8 world 