Using some holiday on the garden

I always struggle to use my holidays. People who don't work in academia tend to think that you have months off in summer, but even though the students end quite early, you of course first have to mark all their work, sit through all the exam board meetings, sort out the supplementary assessments in summer for students who didn't quite pass the year, fill out all the quality assurance paperwork, actually do the things you promise in your quality assurance paperwork, provide topics for the third and fourth year dissertation modules create timetable requests for the new year, and all these other things. And then you have to prepare all the module websites for the new year. And prepare all your teaching. It's easy to just run from one academic year into the next without stopping!

An additional complication is, of course, the cat. It is always a bit of a headache situation to leave her. If I would have substantial holidays abroad booked, I would basically be forcing myself to take time off. But that often doesn't happen.

This year is no exception. But at least I was taking some days off. I was going on quite a lot of jollies! The Snowdon horseshoe, H floor of Cwmorthin… you can have a great time without leaving North Wales. 

Holiday is not just for jollies, though! It's also for getting all these chores done you otherwise have no time for. And this Spring and summer, my garden has been wild and neglected. But it was nice to be able to sometimes just decide to log a day of annual leave and stay home. And venture into the garden with some gardening implements and get some stuff done.

One of my early targets was the plum tree. It had been looking a bit unhealthy. I had just heard (I may have inadvertently been listening to GQT) that summer is a good time to prune stone fruit trees. Get rid of the dead-looking bits. So I got my saw out. I don’t know if it’s on its last legs. But now it at least looks kind of healthy. 

I did much more, of course, but you can hardly take before-and-after pictures of all weeds you pull. I’m well aware the garden needs bucketloads of more work, but I’m enjoying the progress! 

Before 1

Before 2

After