Blinking back the tears.....

[JulieSherris]

Oh, I feel like a petulant child....

Hubby is on his 9th day off today & apart from St Pat's day, we've been in the garden working every day - which has been great as he's built the raised beds & a fence to stop the dogs using it as an assault course... however....

We started filling in the raised beds & one took one day to fill, leaving a few inches on top for the really good stuff from the soil mountain in the woods at the back of the garden....

So.
Hubby decided 3 days ago to sieve said decent soil.... and then to make it at least the top 4 inches... and it's taken him 3 days to topfill ONE bed!! In the meantime, 5 beds still need to be filled, the other 2 need topping & I have seeds jumping up & down in their packs begging to be sowed, and seedlings crying out for fresh air, bean frames to make, pea frames to put up, tyre towers to fill & all I have is a piddly little canvas barrow because he's using the big one for the sieved stuff!

At this rate, it's going to be another 2 or 3 weeks until I can get all the beds finished & whatever I say to him is going to sound like I'm criticising - again... (we had the gate argument the other day - a whole other story)

Help - before I really lose it - how can I stop him being 'quite' so anal over this? He's never grown anything in his bloody life, apart from his hair, once......
The evidence....

[becks77]

The beds look really good perhaps you could plant one as a nusary bed ready for when the rest are complete!

[Annpan]

Yup, I have the same problem with my hubby - he is currently building our veg beds - last year I knocked together 4 in an afternoon, he has taken a day to do each one he has built

I think it is just what men like him do

[Rosendula]

Yep. I have one sat here on the settee. When we moved in here in Jan 02 I said I would like clothes rails in the airing cupboard and the cupboard above it so I have extra drying room for the clothes. He finally got round to it last winter. The front door was replaced when Katie was a few weeks old. We immediately bought numbers to go on it. He finally put them on a few weeks ago - Katie will be 3 next month! I really think men are on a different time scale to the rest of us. They don't seem to see the urgency in anything, and also seem to need a lot more 'me-time' than women. I'm currently a 'Vampire Wars' widow . Yep, he'll sit here at the computer before work, then after work for the rest of the afternoon, then again after our evening meal. Meanwhile I still haven't managed to finish digging the allotments. I still haven't managed to replace the broken shed window. I still need the roof felting (he used to be a roofer). I still haven't got my composting area sorted. I still have privet planted in a bucket that was meant to be planted in ground during winter. I never managed to relocate the fruit bushes.........

I suppose I should look on the bright side. All the jobs that he's been putting off for years have begun getting done in the last few months, so I'm quietly hoping that things are turning round now that he's part-time. I just need to wait for him to get fed up of slaying vampires or whatever it they do on that game, then I might get a bit more help. But I agree: it's so frustrating and sometimes I do sit down and cry because I'm so bloody knackered and have so much to do and not enough time to do it while he sits there having 'me-time'.

Today, I had some 'me-time'. I took a couple of hours off to sit in the sunshine. Well it's so long since I did that that I couldn't relax. Even when I got my cup of coffee, I still downed it even though I could take my time with it. I realised I actually can't remember how to relax. Ah well. Mother's day tomorrow so hopefully he'll take Katie to see his mother while I go to the allotment.

I could feel the heat in the sun today - it was lovely. I hope you can all feel it too.

[Big Al]

Oh, I feel like a petulant child....

Hubby is on his 9th day off today & apart from St Pat's day, we've been in the garden working every day - which has been great as he's built the raised beds & a fence to stop the dogs using it as an assault course... however....

We started filling in the raised beds & one took one day to fill, leaving a few inches on top for the really good stuff from the soil mountain in the woods at the back of the garden....

So.
Hubby decided 3 days ago to sieve said decent soil.... and then to make it at least the top 4 inches... and it's taken him 3 days to topfill ONE bed!! In the meantime, 5 beds still need to be filled, the other 2 need topping & I have seeds jumping up & down in their packs begging to be sowed, and seedlings crying out for fresh air, bean frames to make, pea frames to put up, tyre towers to fill & all I have is a piddly little canvas barrow because he's using the big one for the sieved stuff!

At this rate, it's going to be another 2 or 3 weeks until I can get all the beds finished & whatever I say to him is going to sound like I'm criticising - again... (we had the gate argument the other day - a whole other story)

Help - before I really lose it - how can I stop him being 'quite' so anal over this? He's never grown anything in his bloody life, apart from his hair, once......
The evidence....

Think yourself blo0dy lucky. It's taken me over 3 months and a lot of pain to build 2 deep beds that are not as big as yours and one isn't filled yet let alone done with any decent tops soil and there are two more planned... oh and I have a wife who will eat the veg but won't do any bl)ody graft to get it onto the plate !!

[JulieSherris]

Oh, I really didn't mean to sound like a spoilt brat - and yes, I appreciate everything Andy does here, honestly, I do.

I think having him home for 9 days straight has gotten to me - he has an OCD problem, and whilst I can usually overlook the little 'quirks' (lord knows I have enough quirks of my own!) the soil filling duties just got to me this afternoon.....

I ended up using my 2 large peat buckets to carry back & forth with filling soil & just let him get on with his sieving - I only hope that next weekend, when he sees all the dents & hillocks from planting, he doesn't rush for his levelling baton again to get it all smooth once more!

Mind, I'm looking forward to getting my barrow back on Tuesday & not stopping to make tea & sarnies every couple of hours!!

Thanks Al - for bringing me back to earth again - I sort of needed that

[pumpy]

A mans viewpoint............. you can't rush perfection!!!

[Urban Ayisha]

i am so anal in every other way with housework and stuff, but when it comes to the allotment i sometimes get real moments of despair cos i'd love to have the patience to sieve like your hubby has but time real is of essence when it comes to planting!

how DOES he get it so fine though? when i try and sieve it sort of rolls up into little balls (the soil) and hardly anything falls through! what type of soil do u have?

[JulieSherris]

Ayisha, that top soil comes from the mountain in the woods..... the previous people had the original top soil skimmed off years ago (no idea why) and it was piled behind the back bank - they then added to it over the years, with old peat turfs & anything compostable.... Our soil is quite peaty anyway - seeing as how the peat bogs are about a mile away, this isn't surprising... so there's no heavy clay until you get down to about 18inches - and it's not really too heavy, just quite a bit of rubble...

I must also add that it takes hubby about 90 mins to get a barrow of soil like that..... and then it took 12 barrows of topping - yep, he counts everything..... even the 1780 staples that it took him on the wire mesh fencing....

[Ellendra]

I don't have any advice for OCD, but I had a friend who was once a video game widow. She found that by giving him "incentive" to stay in bed a bit longer rather than play games first thing in the morning, suddenly her husband was eager to help out with whatever she wanted done, without her having to nag.

[theabsinthefairy]

Oh poor you I know you must be desperate to get those seeds in while the sun is out, but have no advice on how to get your hubby up a gear, looks like a grin and bear it time, with effusive thanks every time another barrow of sieved soil goes in, photo looks good though, lots of hard work done already.

We have a three strike rule in our house, that works both ways:

first time: ask for something to be done politely and set a time frame for it to be done in,
second time: point out that the first polite request has been ignored, establish if there is a reason for that or not (i.e. purchasing of some materials etc)
third time: this differs, my hubby will be sarcastic and point out that I am the first to criticise if he does not do something instantly, and if it is my hubby who has not done something, I yell 'bl**dy' typical', and go out there to do it myself!!!!


-------- errrrr reading that back I think that there is a fault somewhere at around the third time of asking.


Juliesherris
Have a hug, and a cup of tea on another lovely summy morning, and relax and smell the lovely aromas of good quality dirt!

[Millymollymandy]

Oh Julie! Your beds look lovely but there's no need for all that sieving. Maybe when hubby realises that as soon as it rains the stones underneath are going to come back up to the surface whether he likes it or not, he won't bother with the sieving next year....

I am so lucky because my husband knows that the veg patch and flower beds are my territory to design, plant and do with whatever I want - yet he is happy to do the hard graft like the digging!

[JulieSherris]

OOOooo.... I've just been out there with my cuppa to survey the kingdom on a quiet & peaceful mothering sunday morning.... and apart from a few little birdy tracks, the first two beds are still perfect....

Planting will be delayed in ANY bed until at least Tuesday, so that he's at work when I go digging in it all
OK, I won't have to dig really.... but I will be disturbing the top soil.... Thank goodness these only have to be filled once!
I know that any soil replacing in future years will be manageable & I'll be able to do it while he's not here, or if I'm really lucky, the obsession with the beds will have passed & he'll be on to something else

I also know that the way we've set this up will save me HOURS of work, weeds will just pull out easily as long as I catch them early, there's little or no digging required & he bought me a dutch hoe, so that will make life even easier again

Now... we've decided that our little back room of the derelict will become the chicken house, so that's his next project.... and he's started talking about whitewashing the inside before we start........ I might need to source some chicken wellies & teach the chooks to leave their wellies at the door when they come & go..... think that's a plan??
I'm laughing here, but really I think it's because I'm going insane....

[Millymollymandy]

I'm laughing cos your derelict in France would become a holiday home or gite, yet in Ireland it's a home for the chooks!

[JulieSherris]

You know MMM, technically, we could fix up the derelict & add up to 40 sq mtrs without planning permission - and seeing as how the back room can be blocked from the main body of the house, this is still a possibility - though I was thinking more of a 'granny annexe' for later on in life - one of the girls could have the house & I could move down the garden.... oh, I was assuming that Andy 'went' before me too... !

But yet again, time & finances are in control of the projects.... and I dread the day when Andy turns his attentions to it..... oh, heaven help me!!