I remember reading once that 80% of gardening is the equivalent of housework…. keeping things tidy and doing the routine stuff.
In some ways this is a fair analysis: yes, the garden has to be kept tidy and ordered, the grass cutting and weeding are necessary…. but as comparisons go it’s rather incomplete.
Indoors the floor is washed and gets foot-printed again, the carpet is hoovered and gets bitty again. The toilet is cleaned and gets….. well you get the picture.
In the garden, especially at this time of the year each action brings on an even bigger reaction (sorry Newton, your law doesn’t work in the garden)
Today I have mainly been gardening. Well for three and a half hours. I got out the hoover lawn mover and did the grass, then trimmed the edges. Suddenly the garden looked sharper and more cared for. Where I didn’t cut the lawn, just where the snow drops are finishing and the crocus are boldly doing their thing the longer grass looks right: bright and strong against the colours.The bumble bees were out in force, exploring the flowers and getting covered in pollen.
Then I started on the borders, accompanied for a while by radio four and ‘Gardeners question Time.’ (My wind-up / solar-powered radio is my gardening companion.)
I cleared away all last season’s growth which had died back during the winter. And as I cleared new tips of growth were pushing up through the warmed soil giving me that feeling of hope that comes each Spring.
Of course time ran out before the jobs were finished. I had to come in to have a bath, scrub behind my fingers nails and assemble a fish pie before trotting back into Oxford for a poetry reading which was very entertaining and inspirational.
And I returned from the poetry reading to the rest of the fish pie and a glass of wine. Pretty perfick. Oh… and a slice of collapsed banoffee pie! (Not bad, with the topping scraped off.)
And in the morning when I look out of the window I shall have a huge feeling of accomplishment which I NEVER get from housework.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Yes, Nym, gardening IS just like housework. You use all that energy and then you need to do it again in six months. 😦
hmmm, that’s one way of doing the garden (and house) 🙂
Will have to check the mower this week, to see if it will still start! 😦
Mind your back as you pull the cord…
The NSW has taken command of the garden and has been pruning and clipping and weeding and sweeping and shaping for the past few days. She is presently asleep. We’ve bought various fruit trees such as blueberry, gooseberry and red currant for the veggie garden and sown coriander, chives and parsley in strawberry pots on the terrace. She has plans to transform the hillside into a riot of colour, which to me sounds both expensive and labour intensive. How anyone can spend three hours in a garden centre, albeit a very good one, without gnawing your own leg off out of sheer boredom is beyond me,
OZ
OZ, don’t the garden centres there have ride-on lawnmowers or other power tools that you can drool over?
OZ, your NSW sounds a wonderful woman. Sipu has a point. Sounds like you may be needing a power tool or two..
HI Nym.
Yes, I always think gardens are much more rewarding than houses, in terms of the time spent on them. Housework is odd, in that most people who visit don’t seem to notice. It’s most peculiar and somewhat disheartening.
A friend came here this afternoon and she didn’t even notice we had re-decorated the dining room. I found this profoundly depressing in a way.
Not so much in the garden centres, Sipu, but there is a family-run “drogeria”, hardware store, in town where you can happily spend all day and an absolute shed-load of money. It’s full of “stuff” and “things that blokes need” such as chain saws, pool chemicals, enough sockets and spanners to make your eyes water, heavy-duty radios and all the other sorts of things to get Low Wattage’s juices flowing.
OZ
Well maybe you need an arrangement…. is there a coffee shop in the garden centre?
Oh Ara, and after all that hard work too!
My husband always notices what else needs to be done in the garden rather than the bit I’ve been working on….
She is a wonderful woman, Pseu, and like all nurses a real grafter, but has been asleep for the past three hours. I, on the other hand, still have to cook supper and put more logs on the fire.
OZ
a nice bit of role reversal
Ara, they soon notice if the place is a mess!
Pseu we are back to the snow routine, any attempt to use the mower would probably see it sink into the morass! Bulbs are bravely flowering through the snow!
I do hope your snow resolves soon!