In the last two years our home and garden have gradually been declining into dust. The house has not had any maintenance work carried out leaving the house looking shabby and neglected. The garden has had only the most perfunctory of lawn mowing and no other maintenance at all. We bought a “slasher” and hacked a path to the hen house, another to the compost heap and a final one to the field gate and beyond so that we could carry out our main duties but as for the rest? Well, anyone who has tried coming to call on us will know that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to even reach our front door.

Since our return from holiday, I’ve set up a regime whereby I do “admin” in the morning – that is applying for jobs, paying bills and other previously neglected household chores. In the afternoon I have been applying myself to turning the wilderness that we used to call a garden back into just that. I’ve mown the two lawns that have been subject to most attention in recent times, strimmed edges, paths, cut back triffids and today I tackled two lawns that have not been cut for more than a year. I fought and battled with them all of yesterday afternoon, killing two lawnmowers in the process. (Hopefully they will come back to life today as they have thermal cut-outs on their motors and they were really hot.) In the process, I’m sad and ashamed to say I cut a frog in half because it was in the long grass and I didn’t see it before the lawnmower hit it. However, I was thrilled to see how many live adult frogs jumped out of the grass and scooted away before without being squished. It seems as though my frog nursery is working well. Now the lawns look like mown fields but hopefully if I look after them nicely until the end of this year, they will be returned to their former glory.

If the weather holds out I’m going to tackle the front path tomorrow! At least I can make my own environment a little better even if everyone else thinks I’m good for nothing but the scrapheap.