Hedge BEFORE: height-3m; leaves-thousands & thousands

You know how in BEFORE and AFTER photos, you usually prefer the AFTER ones - well, especially if it's a teetering dilapidated building in a state of collapse that's then remodelled into something modern and habitable? I know that sometimes, like me, you may prefer the BEFORE photos when rooms are rejigged by zany designers. You may not like the new colours, or even the concept.

Personally, I'm not one for concertina glass doors opening into the back garden, to let the outside in. And I'm not a fan of open-plan living/dining/kitchen spaces. 'Cos what happens if you're cooking Cullen Skink, or Cullen Stink, as I call it? It's bad enough trying to contain the stench of fish behind a kitchen door, with the window wide open, extractor at Full, a bowl of microwaved lemon slices, and a flaming Ocean Breeze candle!

And don't get me started on squeezing an ensuite into an already tiny bedroom. Anyway, who wants to listen to you piddling in the middle of the night? Just go down the hall to a bathroom where you can do your ablutions privately!

But I'm digressing because I have completed my very own extreme make-over: Taming the Cottage Garden. Phase 2. As you may recall, my 3m high Forsythia hedge required clipping back?

Fact 1: with shears in hand, I could only access the top of the hedge by means of an unstable aluminium ladder, and from the 6th step. Not good. I suffer from vertigo.

Fact 2: the sparrows loved weaving about inside it. Every day they sang, loudly and merrily, about how much they loved it.

It now looks like wicker-work. The twisted twigs look like they are straight from a Scandi Xmas Catalogue! The sparrows are now perched on the pirky top. They are grumpy and disgruntled and silently huffed.

'It should recover', said Craig-the-gardener.

'Not hygge, nor lagom', moan the sparrows.

Hedge AFTER: height-2m; leaves-92

 

Yesterday I was sitting out in the garden. 3 birds shat on me.

Verdict: nobody that happy then!