Craft making wise I have turned my hand to being a pattern cutter. I cut out dozens of bits of fabric, interfacing, fleece and cork for our top selling lines. This speeds up the making process for Hubby, no end. My current goal is to create back up stock of pre-cut pattern elements. I have to ensure I don't get spaced out whilst doing it. To find oneself on a mission toward achieving self alienation. Maintaining a sense of balance between my sense of purpose and the permission to do otherwise, well, that is the territory I am traversing.
I've started a garden project, one I've been wanting to get stuck into all Winter. Waiting for warmer, drier, less blustery weather, which as you know, has so far been in short supply. A major section of our patio in the back garden collapsed, the decking having completely rotted. Once I excavated beneath, it was plain why. The downpipe from the workshop roof, which I'd assumed had a drain. Turned out to have no drain at all. So all the run off just regularly pooled beneath the decking.
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| Rotten Decking |
I had also, mistakenly, pressumed that the ground beneath the patio would be concreted, or at least be some type of firm surface. It is not, It is loose gravelly earth. This has completely overturned the space I expected to be working with. It wasn't worth replacing the rotten decking. Instead I'm creating a sunken area to be filled with gravel/ shale to stand our plant containers on.
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| Just waitin on the shale |
We bought a 100 Litre water butt to collect water from the down pipe in. It was so persistently raining last week, we quickly discovered that this water butt fills up in less than a day of persistent rain. Thus we really needed to have a length of overflow pipe to take away the excess to a nearbye drain. What I'd first thought would be a relatively quick one stop solution, has become a complex sequence of drainage issues. We have to do this, before we can do that. Though I'm confident we will get there, eventually.
In the darker recess alcove of that same patio is a two tiered trough of plants, with a background trellis. Built by us to disguise a hideous, redundant coal bunker. Its the epitome of the sheltered low sunlight area. Over the years we've discovered precious little thrives there for long. We planted two jasmine plants, which have completely taken over the earth in one trough. Starving anything else of water and scarce nutrients. The jasmines have grown to where the light is, so produce only leaves and flowers higher up. Leaving what is beneath a twisted tangle of dry looking branches. This year, one of the two jasmine's looks near the edge of demise.
In Autumn 2023, out of despair, I threw a layer of fresh compost on both troughs. Scattered a pack of wild flower seeds over them and hoped for the best. Well, by the Summer approaches, it has so far revealed itself as being mostly lush grass. But that grass is truly going for it. So a small, but limited, success there.
Like most gardeners, I'm constantly playing catch up with the reality that cats exist. Shortly after I'd cleared away the rotten decking revealing the earth beneath, some cat had already chosen it as its favourite poo palace. Cats love to shelter from the sun, particularly by sitting direchly upon ferns or ornamental grasses. Completely flattening some plants by lunging down from the partition fence above.
There's a small wooden trough by our back door. Currently it has six beetroot plants salvaged from garden centre oblivion. That trough, had previously been a favourite poo haunt for a whole sequence of cats that think they own our back garden. Even though there were miniature iris bulbs growing in the trough.
I'd only put the beetroot in a day or so, before finding one of the plants completely hoofed out of the soil by one feline's undoubtedly very effective judo back kick. So I've returned my sequence of bamboo sticks, unaesthetically arranged in a scout pattern, that pretty much puts an end to any feline desire to defecate there.
Its nor pretty, but its effective. Age and experience, well, it can be quite telling sometimes.
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