Cleaning up borders, flower-beds, large tracts of weed-covered land, is satisfying in many ways. I mean, turning weedy-green and over-grown ground in to swathes of dark-chocolate-coloured earth is hard work, but the blank canvas that the bare soil presents afterwards is so very intriguing. Exciting, even! What will grow here? What is already growing here? (Yeah, probably more weeds...) What has grown here in the past?
One part of my Granddad's old garden sits in the lee of a large conifer/privet/yew hedge. It sees very little light at the best of the year, and in Winter it's lucky to see daylight at all, never mind anything direct in the sun department.
It's this part that was once a rockery. Well, technically it's still a rockery - the rocks are still there, after all, but serving as stepping-stones over the weeds to the pole of the washing-line, rather than focal-points of the border.
I do so wish I'd taken before shots. Weeds. Just weeds, turf, wild strawberries, clover, thistles, the odd bramble here and there. Mother Nature was doing a very good job of trying to take back her own!
But after tidying up a few shrubs, and clearing the weed-pocalypse I discovered a world of bulbs already pushing their way through the ground, and ended up pictorially documenting their flowery story.
I may not have managed to see the snowdrops at Sorghvliet this year, but the home garden set quite a decent show itself, once it was free of the choking embrace of Nature Gone Wild!
The good thing is, though, that although it's not quite a 10k step walk, digging, bending, weeding, it's all good exercise. Well. Exercise, at least! ;)
