I always forget between bouts of gardening (possible something to do with them occurring a full year apart, but possibly not) that it usually involves a lot of physical pain on top of the actual energy required to do it in the first place.
To date, from one full half-hour of gardening duties, I have incurred light scratches on the inside of my right arm:
I also have a deep long scratch on the outside of said arm (which I'm unable to get a photograph of because I'm not a contortionist more's the pity) and a collection of varying size scratches in a variety of patches on my left arm. I also removed a half-centimetre long splinter (or blackberry prickle) out of the knuckle of my left forefinger.
These are not life-threatening injuries by any stretch of the imagination, but that they occurred while I was wearing leather gloves and a long-sleeved top did surprise me. Those berries have tenacity. I'd admire them if I wasn't still picking little bits of them out of my skin.
But at least that's most of the back garden done. A quick tidy up around the half-dead orange and lemon plants and it'll all be over for another year. Apart from picking the fruit, and I don't consider that a gardening duty, I consider that dessert.
The front garden still needs to be weeded, hopefully at less risk of harm, and then I just need to dig a trench, pop in my pink fir seed potatoes, mound them up a couple of times and I'm done.
The peaches and nectarine trees take care of themselves, as does the quince tree and the Jerusalem artichokes. No doubt I'll also end up with a courtesy crop of last year's potatoes, as they seem to be the gift that keeps on giving.
Is there anything better than free food? My arms, hands and knees are bound to disagreed for the next couple of days, but then I'm sure they'll be in agreement. It's the bomb.
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