Good Friday pottering

OH is first out of bed and brings me coffee. He's such a darling. Nod off again, thinking about whether to monetise my hack&slash approach to garden maintenance. I've been doing this ever since I discovered that the pay rates are now roughly equal to what I earn an hour in my line of work. I need two degrees for my line of work but only muscle and some tools for garden maintenance. It is, as it were, a no-brainer.

Rolling out of bed really late. Bacon butty for breakfast. There's some 60s movie on that I can't instantly identify. “Cleopatra?” I ask. “No,” says OH, who is absent-mindedly loading up his Kindle, “It's about this bloke who turns into a zombie, and his twelve mates who turn into vampires.”

It takes me a while to work that one out.

After breakfast, I wander into my shed under the pear tree. Every woman needs her own shed. Mine is a 5m by 2.5m beauty tucked in the back of the garden, with a pent roof and the roof itself made up of opaque, twin-walled six-inch thick polycarb sheets. It's not frost-proof, despite the walls being insulated with Celotex but I think that's probably down to the fact that I didn't make the door draught-proof, the 3 windows are single-glazed and the one-sheet wooden floor also remains uninsulated, apart from an old carpet remnant. I bought a gas-fired heater in 2011 and that's been doing its job well. Haven't had to replace the gas bottle yet.

During the day, the shed heats up really quickly anyway so it's almost always a balmy 16 to 25 degrees in there, depending on whether the sun is out. If it is, temperatures can easily go up to 40 degrees.

I use the shed for painting and, more recently, all manner of DIY projects. I re-used an old undersink unit and another throw-out kitchen cupboard donated by next door as supports plus a massive MDF sheet to form the big painting table. In December, I also picked up a tattered but sturdy workbench for free from a local college that was clearing out its old workshops.

Most of my materials are stored on Ivar shelving that I've had for 20 years. A lot also goes under the workbenches. I bought an old cabin trunk for £15 from a local charity last week (I could have haggled but it's for charity) and that will become my tool box.

I love it in here!

Today is quite overcast, with the occasional drizzle. I appropriate the cordless drill to mount a tool board.

OH is weeding the fruit bushes and takes out the strawberries. Am planning to plant these in windowboxes out the front and see what happens.

Two boards of Celotex left in the other shed and blocking everything. Job! I cut the boards up quickly and fit them between the slats. But today is somehow not my day. Already, when I mounted the toolboard, I was struggling with getting the screws to engage. Or the drillbit to actually drill instead of scouring a nice round hole into the top of the screw. I keep dropping things and, in picking them up, dropping them again. Or hitting my head, or my arse, in coming up. It's as if Friday 13^th had got its diary muddled. And so, in crossing back and forth between the two sheds, I bang my left knee quite badly against the chimenea handle. It's bleeding and swelling quickly, nothing major, but it hurts. I really hate pain of any kind, it makes me furious, and so the red mist descends and when I'm done, the chimenea is lying on its side, out of the way, with me looming above it. It won't cross me again in a hurry! Try coming back from that one!

Hope the neighbours didn't see this.

Smaller shed finally celotexed up (but clearly need more Celotex). Potter around filling random screws into jars. OH returns from the allotment. He's fixed the leaky shed roof. Because I'm so grateful, I bully him into tidying up the rest of the small shed (which is nominally “his” but which also stores the bulkier garden machinery).

There's a green water butt lying on its side in the middle of the garden. I forgot why we got it – by the house, we're all fully butted-up – but it could go on the allotment. Unfortunately, the tap at the bottom got pushed in and won't come out. After the Wounded Knee incident, my patience is wearing thin so I just saw through the offending tap, ruining it. What the heck. Life is too short. The butt is half full with old beech leaves, some decayed in stagnant, stinky water, the rest just as beechy as when they went in. That was a bit of a pointless exercise then. All I wanted was lovely leafmould. I tip the whole mess out and hope that the butt will dry in the sun so that I can fix the hole at the bottom with some of my neighbour's double-sided sticky tar tape.