The insanity of gardening

Apart from knitting (and cooking and drinking wine, but bear with me here), apart from knitting - Gardening is one of my real pleasures. Don't get me wrong, I loathe weeds with a passion; hate the wrong kind of weather; detest slugs and snails; would totally eradicate bindweed/convulvulus from the global memory of the planet in a heartbeat; get annoyed that grass will grow strongly and unbeatably anywhere and everywhere - except on a lawn, but all that said, I enjoy gardening.
So, today, I was planting up a new bed. Last year, on the LHS of the drive, I planted up a lavender bed, edged with box. This year, throughout the year, it looked lovely. It is two tone (I like colour combining), in a soft pink and a warm purple. When the flowers were out, and the sun was shining, the scent was gorgeous; the bees droned, and honestly it was a lovely area where before grass had struggled to survive.
So this past week on the RHS I have dug up some dead (well they are now) and dying (well honestly they really were) shrubs, raked over the soil, and set about putting in a matching bed of lavender edged with box. Hubby went to golf today, which I thought was a GOOD thing. I do like a few hours just to pootle, poodle and do whatever.
However the "whatever" today involved a lot, yes A LOT, of swearing. The wind was blowing, and the weed suppressing membrane I was laying wasn't (laying); it was flapping and waving and moving and not staying still. The most stupid thing is that you lay the membrane, get it sorted into places (like lining up stitches, or decreases) then you hold it down and cut ruddy great holes in it. Then you do this whole "shy" thing whereby you fiddle around, under the membrane, digging holes in soil you cannot see, then plant lavender in holes you hope are large enough (you can't see), then try and bed them in with spare soil (which YOU STILL CANT SEE), whilst trying to hold the membrane down in a wind (which unsurprisingly you cant see), and you hope that the end result (which you very clearly can see) is perfect. Huh!! A lot of swearing. Then, just for fun, I throw on a couple of hundred spadesful of shingle ... and tonight I am only half way ... so I have just as much pleasure tomorrow to look forward to.
When I came in, to chill out and knit a few rows, I finished off a front .. just a few rows. So I moved on to the socks, when I hit the divide for heel, so migrated and I knit a few more rows of the surprise Christmas swap thing, before I needed to integrate a fairisle or is it fairaisle ... I don't know, well a dual colour pattern section, so I moved on to my 4th project ... and now I have hit the arm decrease area on the RHS front of that ... so I am about to find something mindless to cast on ... either that or I'll just go and read (with my unemployed fingers twitching) for 10 mins before bed.
Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, have a good day .... my aching legs and butt are off to bed ... and joy of joys, the weather looks good for tomorrow, so I guess I'll be outside again - whoopiedoodie!
XXX