Was it all worth it?

Today I was reminded of a post I wrote in the spring entitled “Life gets in the way of mountain biking”. My wife, Ali, had asked me early in the year what I’d do in our garden if I had a blank canvas and within days we were digging up many years of work. I hadn’t expected the job to affect my mountain biking but it did, in a big way. I had to dig many tons of soil by hand and get it to a skip at the front of the house. There was no access for a mini digger so I had no option. We previously had 3 diagonal raised flower beds which we have replaced with a sunken pond, which now houses 7 healthy looking goldfish. 3 others seemed to have a parasite and sadly died but the survivors are grown considerably. So was it all worth it? Was it worth compromising my mountain biking and did we really need to destroy some perfectly good flower beds? I won’t feature the front garden which is similar but why don’t I take you on a tour of the back garden?

The new pond complete with dog toy and washing. Well, it has been a good drying day.
We’ve replaced the 3 diagonal beds with beds up each side, which house a good proportion of the plants we dug out.
Moving the roses has reduced their vigour.
We desperately needed to improve the soil here and things seem to be growing OK.
We live near the River Yarrow so it seems essential to grow yarrow.
Our old pond is a nature pond and has no fish.
Further down the garden it’s more shady so hostas do well.
Our son, Dylan, has always wanted to shoe horses so we built a forge using timber from an oak tree which had got too big for the garden.
Angelica may look like a Triffid but you can process it for cake making. Honestly!
There’s always somewhere shady to sit. The trees in the school behind leave the bottom of the garden mainly shaded.

So was it all worth it?

1 Comment

  1. kirkmtb says:
    July 22, 2021 at 8:59 pm

    Your mountain biking was not compromised! As far as I could see, you went out the same number of times and I washed your kit the same number of times. But I have the garden of my dreams! So it was worth it! Your bike widow, Ali.

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