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Friday 15th 44F. Overcast. Up at 5am after a 10.30 bed time. My back hurts and I have an occasional wet cough. I found myself trying to suppress the cough so as not to waken my [late] wife. I even looked round to check she was still asleep. Not a good start to the day!
6.00 Breezy from the north. The cough stopped once I was safely upright. The plan is to continue clearing the patio/slab. Not sure I want to drive to the further recycling yard with the latest full load. It could wait until tomorrow for the local yard.
I'll see how I feel later. The shops are still shut. So no real point in going out. Not unless I need to fill the trailer again.
The concrete slab's outer corner/narrow edge adjoins the drive. Which has always [severely] limited the turning space available. Clearing the slab will allow me to turn the car far more easily. Particularly when towing the trailer.
My wife used to have polystyrene boxes of plants and saplings sitting there for years. To mark the edges and corner of the slab. She would get very cross if I accidentally ran over her boxes! Which were in a total blind spot on the offside of the car when leaving. I couldn't open the car door. Because then the door would hit her saplings! She would raise a variety of oaks from acorns. Some of her fastigiate red oaks are now 30' tall!
All Her plant boxes have now been moved to the lower garden. The stack of compost bags is awaiting a decision on placement. No point in leaving it in the the bags. Nor on the slab. So I might as well spread it somewhere. Or just empty the bags onto the compost heap. I have no use for them.
8.00 The compost bags are now moved to a spot beside the compost heap. Down behind the shed out of sight. They weighed twice as much as I remembered.
I am at a loss to know what to do with her worm farm[s.] Consisting of two, large, inverted, plastic water butts with their bottoms removed. To allow fruit and vegetable waste to be fed to the worms in the soil inside. They are then covered to keep the rain out. The tubs are sealed at the bottom to stop the worms making a run for it.
It seems cruel to leave them unfed. Just as cruel to imprison them without food. I will try to topple the tubs. Though I imagine they will weigh a ton. Suggesting a splitting of the sides to release the hungry worms.
8.30 Rocking the tubs allowed them to be easily lifted clear. Voila! Two perfect, soil-castles. Nearly three feet high and two feet in diameter. I ran out of steam. Now enjoying morning coffee.
I am very unsure how I feel about removing all my wife's outdoor paraphernalia. Every single item was placed there by her. Every single pot was filled with compost and seeds or plants placed in them. Before being carefully placed on shelves to grow on. Every single thing in the garden has been touched by her.
Am I erasing her legacy and ultimately eliminating her presence? Or getting closer to her by handling, sorting and tidying everything of hers? The place is far too untidy to allow things to continue as a frozen shrine to The Head Gardner. The entire garden would soon be covered in weeds and self-seeded saplings!
She had no need of tidiness. Because nobody except we two would ever see it. I asked her about her isolation recently and she said she preferred it. Better than having: "People coming around all of the time." I am not sure whether to agree with her sentiment. Or feel terribly sad that nobody ever did "come around."
Yes, she could live her own private life. Do and wear exactly what she claimed she wanted. But at what cost? I was her only company. Was that enough to avoid the ache of loneliness? I had the "social life" of going shopping and saw other shoppers. She hardly ever saw a soul. Except for the postman.
I have so many unanswered questions. Memory of her presence is still so very close. Yet so far removed from the simplest communication. I must remain grateful that I had the chance to talk her ears off for her last few days. Even when she could no longer respond verbally. To tell me to shut up!
Her last few blinks and tightly squeezing my fingers, that morning. Was the very last thing she said to me in 55 years of constant discussion. I cling to that moment as the tears flood down my cheeks. It felt like forgiveness and a true expression of the unfailing love we shared for each other.
10.30 I have just returned from the distant recycling yard. A cold, grey and breezy day.
13.00 Just finished lunch. I have been clearing up a stack of rotten timber. Another trailer full and I can see another trailer full coming from the same heap. It has been lying there for years untouched. I wasn't allowed to touch it. No idea why. The stack was half empty under the very basic, corrugated roof. It only held rotten and wormy wood.
When the heap has gone I will have direct access to the northerly garden. Which is mostly, closely planted trees. My wife had a thing about willow varieties at one point and grew lots of them from sticklings.
15.30 I am just returning from yet another trip to the more distant recycling yard. The trailer was filled to the brim again with old timber up to 7' in length. 24km round trip. 72km today plus a detour. It kept me busy but is hard work throwing hundreds of bits of wood to the back of the concrete enclosure. Most "donors" just drop stuff where they stand. Including planks with nails facing upwards. Until I moved them back to get my trailer closer.
I have made a serious dent in the boundaries of the parking space. Moreover, I have discovered another stack of old bricks my wife had hidden away. These can be added to the foundations of my latest building project. As will the concrete from the slab. If I can find a handle for the pick.
It's all about critical [slope] angle. The self-compacting gravel has an addition of clay to bind it together. I have used about 23 tons of it so far. [According to the supplier.]
My wife volunteered to help to load barrows of gravel. After a lorry dumped 12 cu.m [~22 tons] outside the gates. While I went back and forth the 25 x 2 meters to the building site a barrow at a time.
She was already 72 by then. How many wives would [or could] have done this at any age? She was a petite 1.5m or 5' tall but had amazing fitness and stamina! The shovel was almost as tall as she was. So she used a garden rake instead. She leaned the barrow against the heap. Then pulled the gravel down, using gravity, into the barrows. As fast as I could empty them! It took us two whole days of solid work.
The boss of a local building ground-working company had promised to bring a skid steer machine with a shovel. But he couldn't be arsed to turn up as arranged on the day. I rang him and he dismissed me. Said he was on a course and hung up.
He had plenty of other workers, than himself, according to his posh website. Which was full of lavish photos of important jobs. He had bragged that my job, moving the gravel, would have taken only a couple of hours. Instead of which it took my 72 year old wife and I two days working entirely manually all day long. I bet he can't get workers like us!
19.30 Just in case I hadn't had enough exercise for today I decided to tackle the concrete "patio" slab. Using my gloved hands and the pickaxe head as a lever I lifted 1/3 of the entire slab in under half an hour. The concrete was mostly weak, crazed and varied between an inch and four inches thick.
The ground had not even been roughly levelled before pouring the concrete. Most of it lay on bare soil. So adhesion and ground support was very poor. Larger patches were treated to a wallop with a splitting maul/sledge hammer. Just to save me having to lift very large and heavy lumps of concrete. They lifted, but I didn't want to hurt myself dragging them away. Large lumps are difficult to use efficiently anyway.
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