The Perils of Lock-down

We’ve both fully recovered from the dose that we had. But we are still none the wiser about whether it might have been the dose. When the antibody test becomes available, we’re certainly going to take it. Until then, like the rest of the country, we’ve been in lock-down. For both of us this has meant a lot of hard work. I’ve been catching up on heavy jobs in the garden that had been neglected for several years (since my last major operation). T has been getting plants ready for her greenhouse. We threw ourselves into these tasks, perhaps as an antidote to the anxiety of the coronavirus. Little did we know that we were engaging in work that is more dangerous than skiing and rugby in terms of hospital admissions.

Our house is built on the side of a drumlin. We have a large raised border which extends across the rear of the house. The original owners filled this haphazardly with ornamental conifers and other shrubs. Over the intervening twenty five years these have grown into a veritable jungle that is both dense and tall. And because it is a raised border some of the trees now tower over the house and block the light, to the extent that we sometimes have to switch the lights on during the day.

I began by tackling the cypresses; there were six of these. Each had multiple slim branches growing straight up from the same low trunk. The largest cypress was about twelve feet tall and six feet wide. I began to cut out the tallest branches which were in the middle of the clump. The thinner ones could be cut with a large lopper, the thicker ones (3 inches or so in diameter) had to be sawed. This was rough work. I had to clamber through the border, part the outer branches and saw at an awkward angle with small branches scraping my arms. But when a dozen or so branches had been removed, the first cypress was thinner and shorter but still in roughly the same shape. Then I turned to the other five.

The two largest trees were ornamental spruces. These had been planted by the previous owners with no thought for how tall and wide they might become or whether a raised border behind the house was a suitable location. I tried to prune them, but they were too high (about 15 feet) and too dense for this to work. There was nothing else for it, they would have to go. I consulted my neighbour, who arrived with his chainsaw and helped to chop them down. The trunks were about a foot in diameter and I had to secure one with a rope to make sure it didn’t fall onto the greenhouse.

After a long hard day, we had a mountain of felled conifer but much more light for the house and greenhouse. I had stinging grazes on the inside of my forearms and a sore back. I also gained breathing problems (needing to use my inhaler for the first time in months), as one of the other conifers had discharged a cloud of white pollen in my face while I was trying to prune its neighbour. The revenge of Mother Nature?

The next day, T and I dragged all of the conifer branches to the corner of the garden and tossed them over the fence into the neighbouring field. This was heavy going and took several hours to do. We also collected all the dead branches from the lawn that had been brought down from the ash trees at the edge of the field by winter storms. We piled all of these branches up and I started a fire. There is something very therapeutic about a good bonfire. Perhaps it is a trace memory from our lives as hunter-gatherers or the cleansing ritual it represents (burning the debris of winter)? I wore a mask but still managed to inhale some smoke, so it was out with the inhaler again. The next job was mowing the lawn for the first time of the year. It took twice as long as usual.

According to official figures, around 100,000 people require hospital treatment for injuries sustained in gardening and DIY each year. Some 10% of these injuries are serious enough to require admission to hospital. The main culprits are machinery (especially lawnmowers), digging and falls. After our first week of lock-down labour, we’ve gained aching joints, sore muscles, multiple grazes and wheezing lungs. Last night we were so tired that we fell into bed at 9.30pm. Given the risks, we seem to have got off lightly so far. Although, as the lock-down is set to continue for months rather than weeks, only time will tell.