Backyard Cleanup

Finally the shambles of my backyard got to me along with the fact that I have had a week of trying to hide in some physical work. So now, after many months, I can walk out my door and appreciate my yard.

In New Zealand, in the past, the norm was that everyone lived or dreamed of living on a quarter acre section. Now, thank goodness for me, our sections are smaller, though mine is not much so. Our busy lifestyles, even in "Gods own", don't allow us the time to have Father's large vegi garden, fruit trees, lots of lawn to play cricket, or chase the dog, often a little hen house and Mother's flower gardens. Sadly some sections are so small now there is no grass, just enough room for the patio, BBQ area. . Back to my shambles; my back yard as I have written about in Waterbed Sunday is not pristine and is reasonably child friendly, i.e. I don't panic about the holes and bare parts in the lawn, balls, boys or dogs in my flowers, tire skid marks, or trees with wooden structures attached to them. I will admit the classic at the moment is the 7ft by 5ft by 4ft deep hole in my (ex ) veggie garden, with a swing placed strategically over it and then corrugated iron over that. Makes a cool hut I have been told.

What came to my attention this week is, even though our gardens have become smaller, our love of this outside area and the gender role differences in areas of responsibility are still there. I remember my father always looked after the veggie garden and the lawn, and my mother looked after the flower gardens. Any tree or hedge work would also fall into the realm of the male, often with the brutal use of a chainsaw or some other piece of mechanical equipment.

Now I am not a woman who believes that there is men's work and there is women's work. I will quite happily put my hand to anything, but also I am realistic that at times there are things I physically can't do. This week I discovered one of those times.

In this mood of mine to work hard and tame my garden, I decided to trim my hedge. Now this hedge has been growing unchecked, since its last trim, for a couple of years. The final decider was when my clothes-line would no longer go around. This hedge is approx 8ft tall, 70ft long and 4ft wide, with no access from the other side. In my madness I started to cut it by hand,, but quickly saw that it would takes days, at my speed; even weeks. So I straightened up my shoulders, tried to give myelf the look of knowing what I was doing and went and hired a petrol driven hedge trimmer. What I didn't account for was that I just did not have the upper arm strength to carry this up a ladder, balancing precariously, using it at a height just above my shoulder level and equally trying to stretch to my farthest arm reach and more and keep it in control. Subsequently my hedge has an interesting hair cut. My arms sport too numerous scratches to name and I discovered hedge trimmers can actually cut flesh when put down still going on one's leg. No panic here, just slip inside without the kids knowing and grab the plasters to hide Mother's madness. I had forbidden my son to try the machine in case he cut himself.

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