Dear LPG,

I have been a good pensioner and I hope that I have followed the national guidelines when it comes to staying at home and minimising my exploring beyond the front door during this lock-down, but I wonder how many of us pensioners forgot the back door too.  I usually get out there myself and tidy it up but it is not looking good at all.

If you, like me, still have a back door that leads to a garden how does it look?   For some reason being stuck in the house and keeping in touch with my friends on the phone helped me to sort of forget that it was out there, in spite of the fact that we have been blessed with some really nice weather during our lock-down.

I suppose that the restrictions have succeeded in lowering morale in general but it seems to take so much longer to do the simplest of things.  I have to admit to getting up quite late each day during the ‘siege’; somehow there seems to be little to get up for and after a couple of telephone calls to friends, and by the time you have sorted your meals and watched the news, each day is almost gone.   I was quite shocked when I took a serious look at the view through my back window earlier this week. 

I feel that those pensioners who usually have a gardener come and help, have fair justification because the gardening is definitely not classed as ’key work’, but I don’t even have that excuse.  Now that I have seen the state of the place, I have got to grips with the mower and the shears and I have to admit that even half an hour every few days has made a difference to the way I am feeling.

It is surprising how much exercise you get when doing a bit of work out there, not to mention the way that gardening has a way of helping you to forget about all the other variables of life, and breathing in the fresh air is not a bad thing either.  If your garden is wider than four feet and your neighbours choose a different half an hour in the day than you to get to grips with theirs, it can only be a good form of exercise in a world where getting out and about in any other way is all but prohibited.

KR, Grove Park

LPG found some information for those who are not sure where to begin at this time of the year….

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