Distraction…

Thursday, April 30th 2020.

It’s true you know. When people say “Keep yourself busy.”, the ONLY thing that keeps you from going utterly insane is distraction. My Lady and I always loved our garden. One of her favourite summer pastimes was watching me hoover the lawn with my top off while she sat in the shade sipping at a Long Island Ice Tea. As my Lady passed away in February, it wasn’t long before spring showed its ugly (in this instance) face. We love this time of year and it also happens to be the season in which we met. All I can think of when I see all the beauty spring brings, is ‘She’s not here to see it.’

As the lockdown from the corona virus outbreak was started only ten days after the funeral, it became clear that I, along with everyone else would have a lot of time on our hands so I threw myself into the garden. Before my world fell apart, we would maintain the garden for the most part but we were both working hard and had little energy for it.

While my Lady was in hospital, my daughter and I were sat watching the garden, worried about how ill she was during a big storm. Now our fence was shoddy from the start and it was the in joke about how I would always be repairing it when yet another breeze broke it again. This storm was doing it’s thing when one panel started wobbling, then another, then another. One ends up the other side of the garden. “Ooohh Mama’s pissed!” we said to ourselves. Another storm two days later, left just one panel remaining which was flapping around threatening to give one last slap in the face at any moment. ‘You’ll have to get it done properly now!’ I heard my Lady say to me in the back of my head with a chuckle in her voice.

So fate gave me my first project. I could hardly just ignore it however grief stricken I was. I spent several days clearing, weeding and planning. As for the fence… Well… We hadn’t had a bonfire for a long time and had always planned to have a fire pit where the ‘penis pond’ used to be. So, after spending all day cutting new beds, potting on the plants I purchased when grief spending and smashing the fence to pieces, I have the bruises to prove it, I carefully built the fire at dusk. I was determined to see every last piece of that bastard burn in hell! Obsessively so. I stayed there, hypnotised by the fire and deep in thought until nearly 2am. 15 hours in the garden in just that day.