On June 1st. I moved from an apartment to a lovely house with a horrible garden. I left the apartment spotless, going back to clean the floor after the movers had departed. In visiting the house before buying, I saw the windows were extremely dirty but fully expected them to be cleaned up before we moved in. Nope! As if that wasn’t bad enough, the kitchen shelves were filthy. How can people leave a house in such a condition? Oddly, shelves in other places such as the hall and bedroom closets were clean.
The garden, however, did not come as a shock. There was no mistaking foot-high thistles and an invasive weed threading its way through two weigelas and along a row of hostas.
I lost one hosta but the weed (I don’t know what it is) is gone from that area, but I doubt the shrubs can be saved. The thistles have been removed but as I was digging them out, I discovered to my horror that beneath the mulch was a layer of stones and beneath that a layer of garden mesh. It was time to call in a man! I had chosen that area for my first flower bed – there are none apart from the hostas and some hydrangeas which I love – so we cleared the whole lot out and put in fresh soil and a few plants.
I lost one hosta but the weed (I don’t know what it is) is gone from that area, Next year I will have flowers. That was my moment of joy among the horrors. I gave myself a pat on the back. There are four more areas that seem to have been cut out for flower beds although nothing but weeds remain. What I have accomplished so far will have to do for this year.
Now I can spend more time on the second draft of my new book. I would love to share the title but I can’t think of one, so I will only say it’s set before, during and after the Russian Revolution.
DIGGING INTO THE PAST 