Week 1 Lockdown 2

I started this second lockdown by posting fairly egularly about what I was getting up to and how I was trying to make the most of the furlough by trying to get on top of things at home. I've since decided that a weekly post might be better, as some days I'm productive, some days not so much. So, here goes for Week 1.

This first week of lockdown has most definitely been about the garden. I don't know why, but I was just drawn to spending time out there. I started off just generally tidying things up a bit, cutting back climbers and sweeping up leaves. This then progressed to a mighty prune of our fruit trees, which was long overdue, but which caused us to create 6 big bags of garden waste, plus our brown bin, which I filled first. I also created the same number of bags of leaves for rotting down for leaf mulch which will go back on the garden in 6 months or so.

As a consequence, I had to book a slot at our local recycling centre, which has remained open, so that we could drop it all off. Some of the branches that we cut off the cherry tree, OH cut up for logs, which we will dry out over the next year and use at some point in the future, but the rest went into the garden waste at the recycling centre.

I thought about starting other jobs in between stints in the garden, but couldn't motivate myself. Between bouts of ironing (I had a huge ironing pile to catch up on), I kept going back out into the garden, doing a bit more each time, as there were still a few small things to do, once the main cutting back and pruning had been done. 

I decided to pot on a new mimosa tree I bought during the last lockdown, as it was getting a bit tall for it's pot and kept blowing over in the wind. I moved a small maple tree that I'd also bought during the last lockdown, but which hadn't really thrived in the position I planted it. Hopefully it will enjoy it's new position in a sunny border.

I planted out some ferns I'd bought over the last few months, put in some bulbs I bought a few weeks ago, cleaned out the greenhouse, washed all the dirty plant pots and generally got into every corner of the garden and cleared debris that had built up over a couple of years. It felt very satisfying.

By the time that I'd done all that, there was very little left to do bar sweeping up some more leaves here and there as they drop so I could finally step away from the garden. It was a relief to get finished, as we can now more or less forget about our outside spaces for the rest of the autumn/winter and now turn our attention to the inside of the house.

I'm hoping that in the next few weeks we can get the hall decorated, or at least get started with it and I'm going to make a start myself on the wooden cupboard in the vestibule (the downstairs part of the hall next to the kitchen). The inside of the cupboard is probably the only part of the house that remained untouched since we bought it and needs priming and painting. It's a job I've been wanting to do for a good few years, but I only bought the paint for it a few weeks ago. I'm quite looking forward to doing some painting again. I'll keep you posted with progress.