This weekend I mainly spent at my Grandmother’s in west Wales. About 10 years ago my Grandfather died, leaving my Grandmother with a large detached house and a rather large garden to look after on her own. I, unfortunately, moved away and my father’s never been with living things – he’s an Architect and spends his time with buildings. Plants are a bit less precise. I’m by no means an expert, but I know how to take cuttings from a Geranium, how and when to prune a Butterfly Bush (Budlea) and other stuff.
So when I arrived on Saturday, I was greeted with an awful sight. My grandmother has a local lad come and cut the lawns, but they’re both about 80% moss (they’re both about 10-15sq.m). The edges sloped down where he’s strimmed them a bit too much – my grandfather used to trim them with a spade and keep them crisp and sharp. Worse than that, the borders had weeds up to waist height and some of the old platns that had inhabited those borders for years had been strangled by the weeds and lack of pruning.
So I set to work, pruning, weeding, digging over, transplanting. I know it’s the wrong time of year for some of this, but it needs doing and there are limits to when I can do this. Out of 4 borders and the vegetable patch I managed to clear a 2m patch of border on my own. Hrm.
I’d managed to get about 2 hours sleep on Saturday night when the pager went off. We had two missing 12-year olds in Cardiff. Great.
I quickly got dressed and headed off down the M4. The police station was busy, with team vehicles all around. Information was coming in fits and spurts and we were finally dispatched to some woods near Cardiff Gate services where a positive ID had been made on CCTV. We stumbled across some kids out camping, which is what we’d been told our two were doing though they weren’t with this group. About 0700 we finally heard over the radio that they’d been spotted and at least one was being detained. It transpired that the kids we’d spoken to had probably known where they were and had got over there after we’d left them to warn them that the police were looking for them. We were stood down once the police confirmed that they’d both been located fine and healthy.
After a hearty breakfast at Ramone’s I headed back to Carmarthen to sort out my grandmother’s garden again. I caught a bit of sunshine – it was a beautiful day and we got a reasonable amount done. Sean and I are going to head over for another weekend soon I think.