4th February 2025
Today has been the day of clearances. I started the morning down at the boundary wall trying to tackle the wild grasses and river tamarind trees that have been growing wild and covering the coral stone walls and engulfing some lovely shrubs. Brian has his hands full and keeps telling me one reason or another that he has not got round to it. Feeling brave, I donned trainers (yikes .. that felt weird) centipedes were definitely in my head. Clippers, shears and a pruning saw in hand I managed to clear one Frangipani and 3 bougainvillea before the heat overwhelmed me and I needed a caffeine injection. A work in progress.
Nursing my bougainvillea jooks, but buoyed by the caffeine and my success my next job was to free the daft Bananaquit that had decided to fly into the house and make his way to the bathroom. He kept head butting the window screens drawing my attention to the filth that had accumulated on them … when did I clean them last …. NOT THAT LONG ago. Out they came and out he flew.
A stiff brush and the dust storm cleared from the screens. Meanwhile my husband unbeknownst to me was looking perilously precarious. I turned round to see this …..
“I’m clearing the gutters” … I have to admit I was a little ….. scared … no harm done and now we have clean gutters fnar fnar. I’ll let him tell you about them.
Then for the second time today I was scared ..actually I was more furious than scared. I just hear an unfamiliarly firm and challenging “Who are you?” coming from my husband. I spin round to see a round, unkempt, scraggly ponytailed ginger man strolling across our lawn. The red headed, redneck is called Pete apparently and he wants to take pictures of the mill. “This is private property” we inform him… no apology or permission requests, “I’m going to take pictures anyway“ … the redneck drawls … well we saw red … we both firmly asked him to “red sky at night get off our land” he continued to stroll forward … bold as brass…. he was relieved of his phone and escorted back to his clapped out redneck motor where his ancient old mum was waiting for him. Having cleared him off and back to whichever gutter he came from. His departing words were … “ You are a bad girl” hmmmph. District C police station added this redneck and his silver estate with license number to their incident list for today.
Phew at least he did not come 2hrs earlier when we were skinny dipping in the pool.
I’m fully aware that all the vegetation I cleared this morning is still at the bottom of the garden waiting to be disposed of ….. that is one clearance too far for today. Tomorrow is another day.
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