Invasive Plants
I love our Fife garden. There are many reasons for this, the first being that it is just a gorgeous garden – although we are five minutes walk from the shops it is a very generous half an acre with loads of trees (including our magnificent cedar at the front), two big patios and three ponds. It is walled with 19th century stone walls, and at the back it is a real suntrap.
Other reasons however is that it is a somewhat manageable size – our previous 3.5 acre garden was fantastic, but you could do an eight hour stint in it, turn round to look to see what you had done – and it would look like nothing. At least here when you do a day’s work, you can see that you’ve made some progress.
And we have some invasive plants here – before I say why this is a good thing, I will tell you about the invasive plants we had in Argyll. There was the bracken, and the brambles, and the sphagnum moss, and the thistles. Every huge weed and wilderness plant was lurking at the edges of the plot the previous owners had cut out of the wilderness, as though the pagan gods of the area had determined they were having the garden back for themselves. Just to give you an idea, the photo below is me in March last year, trying to clear up a bit to sell the house.
And then, any time you planted anything, either it would get drowned or eaten by the copious wildlife (deer ate my pear tree and slugs ate my bedding plants). So loved the house and the area, but the garden was too much.
Anyway, back to invasive plants here in Cupar. We have two main culprits. Strawberries – they are everywhere.
And oregano – herb which is good on pizzas.
That springs up all over the place as well. But my point is that both of these are innocuous and useful. If they do become excessive you can also pull them out without needing the petrol driven brush cutter which we had for the brambles at the other place. Or the chainsaw R used to use to cut down excessive trees. We still have the chainsaw, but I very much hope we will not need it again.
On another piece of news, we decided last week to downsize one of our cars. We got “Gertie” an Aygo X a few months ago, and we had “Voyager” a Kia Sportage as well. We came to the conclusion that as R is entirely home based, and my work is intermittent consultancy, we were keeping two cars solely for occasional excursions plus going to the tip. So as Gertie is the more practical of the two and is still in warranty, we have kept her. We will see how we get on – I think she might be a bit small for the three of us (although we hardly ever go out all three together in the car). Here is me saying goodbye to Voyager – he has been a good car and I hope he gets a nice new home where he is driven more than once a month.
