The garden

I had a reasonable night and although I woke a couple of times, it didn’t take me long to go back to sleep so the temazepan does work in that it doesn’t make me sleep but does sedate me.  This is what I need as lying awake for hours with the same anxieties rolling around does lower my morale.

Today the nurse is coming to change my dressing.  I am surprised that this is taking so long to heal.  When I was a child and had two septic sores (I had fallen in the playground and the teacher asked another pupil to deal with it who put on a plaster without cleaning the wound) I had penicillin powder applied which cleared it up in no time.  I didn’t realise that chicken pox took so long to heal.

We have someone starting today to help with the garden.  I just wish we had had help a few years ago as watching the back garden deteriorate has caused me much anxiety.  For years I did the pruning, cleared the paths and weeded the beds.  I never wanted an over-manicured garden particularly at the back as it merges into the woods but it does need some tender loving care.  When I became ill in the late 90s and couldn’t do any work I found it took me a couple of years to get back to where we had been.  Since 2007 when I became ill again, little has been done apart from the lawns.  Raymond has had the occasional blitz but he is limited since the accident and it is consistent effort which has the most beneficial effect.

The back garden slopes and has been terraced.  Often when people come they shake their heads because it is not nice, flat and manageable like the front.  I like it because the house is high up with a wonderful view over woods as far as the eye can see.  Just part of those woods are in our garden and it was so good when the children were small for them to play in and make camps.  I had a large woodland garden as a child and it was perfect for adventures.  We don’t have a fence between us and the rest of the woods.  When we first came here there was a nasty corrugated iron fence which I had taken away.  Of course, that means nothing keeps the deer out but you would need fencing fit for a fortress really to stop them coming in.

A little further down is a stream and between our garden and the stream are the woods and a marsh.  When the children were younger we naturally tried to wade through the marsh in summer but it was not easy and I wouldn’t recommend any uninvited guest to choose that route to our house.  Although a few walkers and people with dogs walk elsewhere in the woods, this is an area which is people-free and a real sanctuary for animals.