This week : Craig goes mad with his secateurs
When you’ve been involved in a modest renovation project, there are quite a few Elephants in the Room, more often than not often stampeding towards your wallet. Now, with the Summer upon us, our attention turns, with not a little terror, to the garden.
Ironically, when I first visited our potential purchase, the garden was an unexpected bonus when compared to the horror-fest that was The Shack. Like many mid-century bungalows, it boasts a sizable patch of surrounding land, albeit at a forty-five-degree angle to the horizon. Semi-derelict sheds doubled up as storage solutions during the work. When you looked past the rusting cement-mixer, an unwieldy and sodden futon, and a fridge-freezer that made the Leaning Tower of Pisa looked stable, there was clearly potential. It was also wise to ingore the steps leading down to the building – steps the like of which meant that you half-expected to see Laurel and Hardy coming the other way, pushing a clanging piano. As we got used to the place, I’d cast a dubious eye on those steps, expressing concern to my wife over my ageing mother’s capacity to descend without calamity. Determined that nothing would stand between her and a life in West Lulworth though, my wife had mumbled something about external Stanna stairlifts, ending her brutal dismissal with, “Percy the Cat is heavier than your mother; you could always carry her up and down…”
One exciting discovery, though, has been the greenhouse. While it’s always been there, its condition seemed far too shabby to offer the least meagre glimmer of bountiful promise. But last weekend, I went for it: tugging away weed, nettle and ivy, scooping out chicken shit, and wiping decades of thick moss and stubborn algae away from the surprisingly intact panes of glass. My wife has long since expressed a desire to ‘become more self-sufficient’. She’ was off for a lengthy day of watching The Boy eventing somewhere east of Salisbury, so ahead of the World Cup dominating telly, I knew attacking such a chore would reap useful brownie points. I wasn’t wrong – she was delighted when she saw it all cleaned-up and emptied out; although as we walked back to the house and her attention quickly turned elsewhere, I’d wondered if I’d played my ace far too early.
It’s more the eighteen months since that conversation, and a year since we moved in. Now virtually everything inside is complete – although Sam Render remains as elusive as a ticket to a Smiths reunion at Glastonbury Festival. Now the Summer of 2026 is here, we’ve been promised a heatwave, and the garden screams, ‘Enough with that stupid house: it is now my time, people!’ So I’ve spent recent weekends wrestling with bindweed, thorns and thistles, my arms shredded to ribbons. Frustratingly, I have lost the ‘No-Thorn’ long gloves that my wife gave to me as a disappointingly practical Christmas-gift that came with free heavy-hint. Those bloody thorn bushes are gifts that keep giving: held in their nasty little grip are treasures from bygone owners: broken crockery, chewed doggy toys, plastic clothes pegs, and an assortment of decidedly low-value coins. Not exactly Sutton-Hoo.
In other garden news, we’ve also managed to clear a lovely little area shaded by an old olive tree to the side of The Shack – one which is great for long, boozy Summer lunches. My wife has also grafted on a wild flower bed to the front border which is already coming on a treat. Other areas remain more ominous, such as the huge pile of garden waste next to the hedge bordering the footpath, it being mixed with lumps of cement and rusted poles.
But holidays beckon and horse-related as well as build-related costs of stratospheric proportions dictate us remaining in Blighty for the direction so, dear reader, we’ll keep plugging away and posting the best bits on your favourite Dorset-based blog!
- Forty: People in Glass Houses
- Late Spring at The Shack
- A Game of Two Halves
- Thirty-Nine: Return to Render
- Spring Evening 2026
©Craig Ennew 2026
All Going South 
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