Tidy Territory

I've been tidying my edges.

I do like nice sharply-defined edges, and if you do them at this time of year it's easy to keep them sharp for the whole season. All the soil you cut away from the edges goes on to the main body of the plot to make it deeper and more easily worked.

It also helps to cut back the ever-increasing width of the central path. This path is a communal resource shared with the other plotholder who uses the communal gate. Curiously, maintenance of the communal path (ie. strimming, regularly, sometimes weekly in the height of the season) seems to be done only by me. So reducing the width of the path extends my territory slightly and reduces my maintenance load because there's less to strim.

Is this becoming an Issue in my mind? Yes, just a tad. And, petty though this may seem (is!), I've given up strimming 'their' border and now opt to do only mine and leave theirs unkempt. Such fun.

And on the other side of the plot, I've reduced the width of the path simply because it's too big. It's always been too big and hasn't been cultivated in the 7 years I've had the plot. And of course it needs strimming too. The whole thing is just wasting too much space; I do need a path there, just not so much of it. So digging it today was very satisfying, not least because, untouched for at least 7 years, it needed a pick-axe!

I love gardening with a pick-axe; the weight and heft of it, the sharpness of the blade, the swing of it, the way the weight of the tool does most of the work for you, the way you can't stop it once you've started the swing, and the raw excitement as it whistles unstoppably past your toes to bury itself in the earth. You only need to miss once.

But the hidden theme here is that I'm also carving out space for the imminent arrival of the Grape Vines. Marshalls have emailed to say they are on their way. We're in a state of high excitement in Wilbury Mansions.