I am woman, hear me roar …

2 March 2007

… and watch me destroy stuff. Things are afoot in my vegetable patch. My patch is a not particularly big piece of ground at the bottom of our garden, backed by a trellis fence covered in ivy and vinca. Over the past years I’ve carefully wound all the trailing stems of ivy and vinca around the trellis to make a natural screen for the big compost bin behind – and the place under the hawthorn hedge where we kept various things we didn’t know where else to put.

In a few weeks we will be getting a new fence to go along the boundary line we share with our neighbour. Unfortunately some nice shrubs on the boundary will have to come out in order for the fence to go in, but we’ll replant so that the sparrows have somewhere cosy to fight. Down at the bottom of the garden the compost bin is being demolished and removed – Dad is currently flinging all the compost within over the trellis and onto my dormant vegetable patch. I am in the process of removing the ivy and fence as part of the expansion of my patch.

My initial plan was to do this tomorrow. Saturday. Not a work day. My second plan – the plan I chose to go with – was spending an hour out there today making a start on it. The sun was shining and I am very weak-willed when it comes to resisting things that aren’t work. So I set to, chopping away at the gnarly ivy branches, watching the clouds of pollen rise from the leaves and fly directly up my nose and down my throat. You have no idea how pollen-laden ivy is; it’s ridiculous.

I had thought at first that I would save what I could of the trellis, in case it might come in handy for propping things up in my vegetable patch. However it soon became clear that the strongest element of the fence was the ivy rather than the wood. It wasn’t long before I gave up on the pansy-assed snipping and pulling I was doing and moved on to the Hefty Kicking. More fun and much speedier. All I had to do then was fight all the broken bits of trellis out of the ivy so that Dad could put the greenery on the lawn and go over it with the lawnmower in an attempt to get it to fit into the garden refuse bin.

Tomorrow I have to finish pulling down the fence and start digging up all the ivy roots. I’ll also need to pick up all the stones and rubbish that I used to throw down at the foot of the trellis to get them out of the way. I can’t wait to get more ground for my veggies because it’s all the big stuff that I like growing. This year I’ll be going for pumpkins, sweetcorn and potatoes.