It’s been longer than I had wanted it to be for a new post to appear on here. There’s a great deal happening in my “corporate” world that has diverted me away from my usual gardening and blogging over the last month or so. Thankfully, things will be settling down next week and I’ll have some time to get back to a new semblance of “normal”. In the mean time, here’s the completed post I’ve ben trying to get together for the last month.
Forget Fifty Shades, or even Fifty Sheds, this is Fifty Tasks. It comes from the list of tasks I have that are all to do with getting the back of the garden into shape. Some of the tasks are quick and simple, others – such as “Dig out the bamboo” – have taken months. Of course, the list didn’t start off as fifty items, there were only about five or six, but as usual, in order to do one thing, you need to do about ten others beforehand. I’ve had this list since the start of the year and crossed items off as I’ve done them while also adding on several more each time.
The trouble with this year has been scope creep. The plan from the start was always, “to sort out the mess at the back” but where does this end? I started off at the beginning of the year by trying to get rid of as much rubbish as possible, which then extended to clearing out access to the very back and far corners of the garden, which then went beyond into marking out bark-chipped paths and trying to do some under-tree planting.
Unlike making a border, where it’s pretty obvious when it’s been dug over and planted, the back of the garden continues to throw up new work without a clear end point. A whole season later, there are still things to do on my list of fifty, but thankfully, we’re now getting to the dregs at the bottom of the proverbial glass. There are still areas to clear and rubbish to get rid of, but technically, this isn’t at the back of the garden. There’s also a large circular seating area that I want to create – and it’s a big job involving several bulk bags of material currently sat on the drive – but that isn’t technically right at the back of the garden either.
I guess it’s kind of my fault for continuing to add more and more to the list under the guise of “sorting the back out”, without thinking about what point I actually wanted to stop and say, “OK, that’s done now, stop and have a cup of tea and a good sit-down”, instead, I’m still frantically doing work at the back, trying to cross off the last items on the list, while resisting adding more items on, while the season starts drawing to a close and I need to think about winter preparations.
They way I’ve interpreted the “plan” above means it was far too ambitious to do in one season. The way others will interpret the plan means it is now actually complete. I’ll take the middle ground by saying that the back of the garden is restored, but it’s not in its final state, there are finishing touches and planting that still need to be done, but those can wait for another season. In the mean time, I’ll try and be more forgiving while also learning how to properly define projects.
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