Early Garden Chores

by Alan Cole · Published Tuesday, February 4th, 2025 · Updated Sunday, February 2nd, 2025

It seems as though the start of the garden chores gets earlier every year. It was the first day of February at the weekend, and I was out working in the garden before the sun was up.

The first job was to finish off some edging around the new shed. The wooden edging wasn’t high enough and was beginning to rot, so it was out with that and in with some log-effect edging that we’ve used elsewhere in the garden.

Fighting the Bamboo

Next was something of a wrestle with the stand of bamboo. It’s terrible stuff but served a purpose in creating an effective windbreak to shelter the apiary. However, as expected, it’s getting a little out of hand and spreading to places we don’t want it. I think I’m therefore starting what will be an ongoing war against it. Digging it up will be the ultimate aim, but at the weekend, it was just a drastic cutback to get it under control, followed by lots of shredding so that it could be composted.

With that task out of the way, I turned my attention to the hydrangea next to the pond and some of the willow behind it. This, coupled with a general tidy-up around the edges of the pond, has let a little light and air into the area, ready for spring. The pond was always intended as a haven for wildlife, so I was careful not to tidy it too much. The rotting leaves and overgrown foliage in the area are just what the wildlife need. The leaf piles will be a great habitat for invertebrates, which in turn will be a food source for larger creatures. The old seed heads will provide food for the birds, too, and the vegetation around the pond gives them hiding spaces. It’ll never look immaculate, but it should be perfect for wildlife.

This was all quite tough work, so it was interspersed with the lighter task of gloss painting the doors of the new shed and a lunch break.

A Fallen Tree

Whilst shredding all of the bamboo, I noticed that a big white poplar tree at the bottom of the garden had been blown over in the recent storms. It had always been somewhat windswept and leaning— all trees in Ynyslas are. But it had now fallen a little too far and was resting on the stock-proof fence that surrounds the field. I didn’t want the sheep getting into our garden again, so I was going to have to rectify the situation.

Bow saw in hand, I soon cut through the thick trunk. I then decided I’d better get Morgan to help me manhandle it off the fence. So, with Morgan helping, I cut through the last bit of the trunk, and we heaved it off the fence and into the field. It would make good firewood, but without a chainsaw, I wasn’t about to start chopping it up with a handheld bow saw.

Ivy Control and Lifting a Water Butt

With things completed at the bottom of the garden, I returned the shredder to the lean-to and then noticed that the ivy behind the shed was growing a little too well. It was climbing the electricity pole again and has in the past caused short circuits. Time to get the secateurs out again and cut a ring around the pole to stop it in its tracks.

There was also the small task of lifting the second water butt up by about six inches. The builders who constructed the shed had cut the drainpipes a little too high for the water butts, and the rainwater diverters haven’t been working as they should. Rather than buy more drainpipes and re-cut them, I decided it would be easier to just raise the water butts a little by putting them on some old paving slabs I had.

New shed with freshly painted doors and raised water butts

With the last task done, I finally called it a day—my back certainly felt it by the evening.

Just for fun, this is how Artificial Intelligence thinks my day in the garden looked.

I guess it’s got the pond, the hydrangea, the shed and the fallen tree. I’m not sure it quite shows the bamboo anywhere, nor the water butts, and it obviously thinks I’m younger than I am. It also hasn’t caught on to the fact that it’s still the middle of winter. So, other than a few shoots of daffodil bulbs, the Mahonia, Hellebores, rhubarb and a few evergreens, everything looks dead. It hasn’t quite encapsulated the waterlogged ground and general mess either. But, otherwise, it’s not done a bad job!