I have tasked my husband to get the second half of $#@! retaining wall completed by Christmas – so off to the landscaping place we went to purchase all the stuff. That’s technical tradie talk for buying paving sand, crusher dust, and retaining wall blocks to build the last fifteen metres of retaining wall.
Here is what it looks like now – just on the other side. Dreadful!
And here is what it will look like once it is done. Beautiful!
Please don’t misunderstand me: my husband works hard and like me, only has weekends to do anything. We are part-time gardeners together. So the retaining wall has been a very long work in progress. But I finally got very, very sick of the damn thing and I want it over! If that means I have to do all the other jobs around the place while he spends every weekend until Christmas working on it, so be it.
While he shovelled sand and crusher dust all day, I moved the compost bins, cleared plants that had overgrown the old retaining wall, and planted…more tomatoes. I still have dozens of tomato plants. I offered some to a friend today and she promptly laughed in my face. I offered some to my neighbour and he more politely declined (neighbours try not to laugh in one’s face, unlike very old friends). Turns out, it is tomato planting season and those who want tomatoes have them.
I also planted pumpkins and cucumbers. I know I have said, in these very pages, that I won’t plant cucumbers again. And yet. I cannot seem to resist the lure of homegrown cucumbers, even though I fail at them every single year. I just keep thinking to myself: maybe this time. Maybe this year.
Then at the end of every Summer, I curse the cucumber gods (every plant has a god, I am sure of it – one of Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods for each plant), and vow, never again!!
Pumpkins, on the other hand. The Great Pumpkin smiles on my efforts annually.
