Plodding on through semi-lockdown

Nothing much has been happening except lots of quilting of my African fabrics quilt, some walks and some gardening. Oh, and in Son's case, a mouse. He was looking after the children (4 and 1) by himself while his wife was at work when he became aware that the cat was looking with interest at the radiator. This was because there was a mouse behind it (brought in, doubtless, by the cat). Son attempted to extract the mouse, which promptly ran up the inside of his sleeve. After a bit he managed to decant it into this empty jug. Meanwhile, however, his little son had taken the opportunity to remove a packet of cereal from the kitchen cupboard and empty it over the living room floor. Ah, the joys of parenthood. 

Landscapers are due to come on Wednesday to deal with the ex-hedge problem. The boss seemed confident that they could use their digger to hoick out the roots of lilac and leylandii and do various other things necessary to make the ex-hedge area into a beautiful... well, smooth ... area of lawn with no lilac suckers. I hope he's right. I decided to dig out some plants in the corner here, or to be more accurate I decided that it would be good if Mr L dug them out, in order to make the lawn wider in this funny triangular bit at the end of the garden. Mr L doesn't normally do any gardening but he's usually willing to help with my heavier destructive plans. 

I think I slightly broke him on this occasion, however. 

The whole thing doesn't look too bad from a distance.

Close too, however, it looks dire. See how the poor lilac hedge is desperately trying to grow again? It's doomed to failure, or at least I sincerely hope it is. 

I've been digging out the middle, inactive bits of clumps of irises (they resisted strongly) and doing general tidyings up. What with that and too-intensive hand-quilting through fleece, I'm a bit achey in hand and leg. It's not so easy to get up and down when weeding my way along flower beds as it used to be; though I have now acquired an old-lady-kneeler, with handles, which does help. Couldn't be getting old, could I?

It's getting quite autumnal now, which makes this new lockdown thing even more tedious than it did in spring - when it was new life, flowers, birds and so on. It's not so easy to entertain in the garden in autumn and winter, in Scotland. 

One has definitely had enough of 2020 and its shenanigans.

Still, autumn can certainly be pretty. And when autumn comes, can spring...? - as Shelley didn't quite say.