Learnings

On day two of my two-day Grounds Care course it was my turn on the strimmer: preparing it, clearing swathes of unkempt ground, and sorting it out when it stopped working. Impressive hands-off teaching made me independent very quickly and I could well see the appeal of autonomy and immediate results for the people I’m now working with, who’ve been made to feel worthless for years. A very useful experience. And I loved doing it.

This afternoon we were handed secateurs, loppers and long reach pruners and shown how to prune an apple tree. I hadn’t expected my comment last week that I’ve never known how to prune the apple tree in my garden to be addressed so immediately and I could feel my confidence growing by the cut. There’s something very satisfying about manual work and I’m chuffed to bits I can get going on my apple tree now.

I then went to ask the optician to remove the old glasses lens that is such a seriously wrong prescription for my new eye that I can’t use it. I emerged with my vision swimming as my brain started learning how to combine and interpret focal distances it hadn’t used together before. The evening was not the best time to have chosen because since the operation I’ve found bright lights in the darkness all at different distances much harder to process than less contrasty daytime. So I decided to try to get the camera record clearly what was swooping in front of me. I have lots of swirly pictures of wet umbrellas and light reflecting off the pavement, but liked this combination best. (It's better large.)