paved driveway with a bunch of bamboo stalks lying on the ground _ a wheelbarrow of bamboo leaves _ a stand of bamboo _ and a green iron bench

2025 Grateful 28: The gift that keeps on giving

We’re five years into an 18-month renovation. We’re at the point now where I walk into a room and feel not the anxiety of yore but peace. I look around and like what I see.

I’m pleased with what we’ve done.

The house has a lovely vibe.

Yes, the plaster might be falling off some of the interior walls downstairs because of an issue with the tiles on the terrace and a falling out with a certain contractor, but even that doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. In this heat, they’ll dry out soon.

Yes, we might still be waiting for the chimney guy to come and fit a chimney for the stove upstairs, so we can finish that one wall.

And yes, himself might be growing a tad impatient with my seeming reluctance to order white goods for the upstairs kitchen – I will, I will – so that we can get the carpenter in to start on the cabinets.

But all in all, it’s looking good.

I have comfortable chairs dotted around the house, upstairs and down. They’re my reading chairs. Each is placed to fit one of my many moods.

From one, I can see the stand of bamboo our neighbour gave us a couple of years back. We walled in the eyebrow-shaped patch with a thick plastic sheet we were assured was bamboo-proof. So far, we’ve caught only one escaping. They’d worked their way out through the overlapping seam.

Bamboo likes to travel. Our southside neighbour is concerned they’ll visit her, so we watch them carefully.

Just in case.

We put the stand in as a privacy shield. It was bloody hard work. The lads did it, but I dug some, too.

I had a vested interest.

I didn’t want to sit on my terrace and watch the goings-on of the presszó across the road. Nor did I want to catch the eye of a random stranger as I went about my business inside my gates.

The bamboo protects us.

It’s also home to the myriad birds living within its shade. Their singing provides a musical background to my days.

Yesterday, himself needed to stake his beans. Rather than run to the local hardware store, he decided to use what we have on hand. He thinned the clump, taking the dried stalks and the heavies growing dangerously close to the edge of their containment. I stripped the canes of their leaves, planning to use them later to add to the latticed walls of my new deadhedge-cum-bughotel.

The stand still looks great and does what it’s supposed to do.

This feeling of subsistence, of accomplishment, though insignificant in the grand scheme of things, made my day.

And for that I’m grateful.

Teepees made of bamboo stalks so that green beans can run up them

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