The First Big Push

Written by Clare 

Tuesday, 14th May, 2013.

Today was the first big push in our effort to initate a rejuvenation of the wildnerness outside MAJ's flat - and wow, what a great start.  Having weeded and tidied the front garden in relatively little time, and with only several major accidents including a head wound, MAJ promoted us to work on the back garden.  Frankly, this was much like being promoted from handing out leaflets for a circus, to lion-taming.  We felt way beyond honoured.

Before climbing through a couple of doors into MAJ's Narnia, she admitted that she hadn't actually taken a look at it in a while, and seemed surprised to find several plants she didn't recognise at all.  Meanwhile, Daniel and I were fairly sure that many of the plants had not even been encountered by scientists, and that we were were discovering many new species of plantlife.  

  

This garden is a lost wonder of the world.

Probably.

So, Daniel got on with gathering dead plants, stray twigs and weeds with a giant fork (I believe this is the technical gardeners' terminology), whilst I was armed with a pair of secateurs.  It wasn't long before our hacking away began to reveal ground, and we discovered that the ground was home to a few paving slabs. 

Upon lifting up one of these paving slabs, we found a pair of frogs who had made a burrow underneath, furnished with a load of junk.  If I'm honest, at this point I became somewhat distracted by all of the frogs in the pond and I wound up taking A LOT of photographs of lovely frogs, which is what most of the rest of this blog will consist of...

As beautifully green as it is, our inspection of the pond led to a decision to clean it out, as 80% of it seems to be made out of sticks.  However, I suspect that cleaning it out will be a pretty disgusting experience because it stinks more than anything else on earth.  But the hundreds of frogs don't seem to mind.  Horrible smells or not, we are desperately looking forward to our next session of gardening, and we are very excited about the potential future for this wonderfully wild garden.  It's really nice to think that once we clear a bit of space, it could be a really nice space for MAJ to relax and soak up all of the beauty.

So all in all, it was a productive, lovely day in the garden, and we're all feeling very positive and pleased.  And to top it off, there was a beautiful spot of rain to end the day.  Gorgeous.  And tomorrow we're back to our indoor day-jobs!

....until next time.