Knackered

We were breakfasted and out of the house shortly after nine o'clock this morning. If I knew how the day was going to pan out, I would have taken a more leisurely start to the day.

Our first mission was a trip into Worcester to pick up a new hedge trimmer.* I have bit the bullet and gone for a battery powered model. With approximately 300 yards of hedging, the garden is certainly going to be an arduous test for this new piece of kit.  

After collecting the trimmer, we headed across the road and spent a happy hour in the supermarket picking up a few staples. Having done that we decided that the planned trip to Golls Nursery could be deferred and headed straight home.

After unpacking the car and putting the trimmer battery on charge, it was lunchtime. 30% had heated a batch of celeriac soup from the freezer and it was beautiful. I kid myself that it is healthy because of all the vegetables in it, but this perspective necessitates ignoring the significant quantity of butter and double cream added.

Lunch was followed by a way too short snooze, before I headed out to the garden and cut the remaining lawns; the front lawn, around the greenhouses, around the garage and the verges at the front of the house. 

I had certainly got my steps in this afternoon, but 30% was in the mood for a short walk, so we took a twenty minute amble down the lane before turning and heading home.

As 30% headed in to the kitchen to think about dinner, I grabbed a sack truck and spade and headed up to the orchard. 

We will shortly be having French drains installed in an attempt to better handle the run-off of rain from the field upslope of the cottage.  The orchard has an old paved path along the course of the new drain and this is likely to get destroyed during the excavations. I thought it best if I lifted the paving slabs and stacked them out of the way, rather than have to pick up fragments of slab at a later date.

I had lifted and stacked twenty of the slabs before exhaustion set in, and I wandered back to the house and slumped on the sofa. Both of us were exhausted and did little other than eat this evening. We were in bed by nine o'clock and snoring not long after

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* I have a petrol powered, long reach hedge trimmer which is a must for the upper portions** of the hedges, but it is heavy and awkward for the lower sections. I am hoping the new battery powered trimmer makes the lower sections less effort.

** Some of these require a step ladder, even with a long reach hedge trimmer.