I’ll just have a coffee first, then I’ll start …..

Waiting for dinner, one very scruffy looking robin.

Every day for the past three or four weeks, I have walked past the flower bed outside the back door and thought to myself “Really need to get that weeded and the flowers planted out” and then almost immediately followed that thought with “I’ll just have a coffee first.”

So the weeds got left and each time I looked at the bed I knew that it was going to be that bit harder to clear it. Part of the problem was that I knew the grass, creeping ivy, ground elder and other such tenacious bullies were going to put up a bit of a fight and by the end of the day I would be sore, so very sore and I really, really don’t like pain and don’t relish the thought of inflicting it upon myself.

Clearing the beds and winter crops

Spot the difference

Today you could have been forgiven for thinking that it was still summer in our part of the UK: the sun was shining, there was barely a gentle breeze to disturb the illusion and temperatures reached the low 20’s. It felt like summer but a look around my fading garden soon dispelled any pretence and I had to face the fact that there was one job I couldn’t put off any longer, so this morning I started the laborious process of clearing the spent plants from my beds, reclaiming my plant rings and labels and consigning numerous bamboo supports to winter storage.

The great tidy up had begun.