Electric pruning

Wake at 5:20 and try to go back to sleep but it's no good and eventually I get up just before six. It's the first day since Norman has been staying with me that I am awake before him. There is a light mist over the fields as I let the dog into the garden, he trots dutifully on to the lawn to relieve himself and then runs back, in a scurry of feet, for his breakfast. I make a full English breakfast, but find I have run out of fresh tomatoes so have baked beans instead and my usual black coffee. I feel full of energy this morning, which is useful because there is a lot of work to do in the garden at Cherry Burton. After washing and dressing and posting a happy birthday greeting for my niece, Rachel, on her Facebook wall, I ring Pip to warn her that I shall be taking the dogs out early, in order to make a good start on the front gardens. We arrive at Cherry, collect Dolly and Teddy and are on the Westwood for eight. It is spitting with rain and I hope it won't become heavy enough to prevent working, but fortunately it stops and we arrive back at ten to nine and I am pruning by nine. Normally I prefer to prune by hand, it is more precise, more meditative and much more enjoyable, but such is the backlog of work that I am forced to use the electric shears, if I have any hope of catching up this week. It is a long time since I used them and I had forgotten how heavy they are, but after an hour the hedges and bushes to the south side have been shorn of their overgrowth. I don't like the look of their shape and use the hand shears to titivate them into a more acceptable form. Pip opens the door and tells me there is a coffee in the kitchen for me. I thank her, fetch it and drink it gratefully between bouts of picking up all the clippings. It is the closest to an apology for last nights rant, or thanks for the help, that I am likely to get. Once the leaves are swept up, I weed the flower beds and realise it is half past eleven. I don't feel too tired but my right hip and the joints of my leg are starting to stiffen. I make a start on the bushes at the front of the house, and by the time they are pruned and I have cleared away, it is one o'clock and now I do feel tired. I manage to prune the overgrowth around the hall window and take the worst of the weeds, large dandelions and thistles, out before calling it a day at one thirty. I call at Tesco on my way home to buy bread and salad and then realise, as I am driving away, that I have forgotten Norman's dog food, rather than turn back, I call in at the small Asda and buy a tin there, before driving home. Norman and I are both starving and I am also stiff and tired, so lacking imagination, I make a roast beef baguette, chips and tossed salad lunch and accompany this with a glass of claret. Normy has some meat from his tin. After lunch I take a lanzoprasol tablet to protect my stomach and then 500mg of anti inflammatory tablets, this arthritis in my hip is starting to become a more regular problem, but at least I am back in the land of the living. Norman and I then sleep until six and I wake up a little groggy at first but restored. Despite the late lunch Normy wants his tea and I feed him around half past six and then take him for a long walk around the fields and village, before arriving back home for eight. I make a pot of tea and some bread and honey and then read Andreas Neuman's "traveller of the century", for an hour. It is astonishingly good, here is a major European writer starting to emerge. The anti inflammatory tablet has helped my joints and I will take another before bedtime. Weather permitting, I shall mow the lawns and finish the front garden at Cherry tomorrow, and make a start on the back on Thursday. My cousin Michael is over from Germany and wants to meet up for a walk and a chat in Scarborough on Friday. After three days gardening I will deserve a break. Still haven't decided what to do longer term about Pip, or Norman, will sleep on it again.