Hedgetrimming for Salvation

Any #Momentum mums reading this will surely understand how easy it is to fall off the diet wagon.

I have been sticking to my menu plan for the week, preparing home cooked, nutritious healthy meals and thoroughly enjoying doing so. However, this did not stop me having a monumental wobble involving a certain chocolate bar famously made in Slough and named after the fourth planet from the Sun. I can't even bring myself to type it I am so ashamed. Curse Morrisons for having them on special offer and curse the children for not finding them in the larder before I did.

To alleviate my feelings of guilt and hopefully undo any potential weight loss sabotage I had decided to put myself through some gruelling gym activity today but as the sun was shining and the garden was desperately in need of some attention , I decided to pay my chocolate, caramel and nougat penance in the form of hedge trimming instead.

My garden has a LOT of hedges.

Sadly none of them lend themselves to anything creative and quirky in the best topiary fashion. The most exciting one is a rough sphere, the rest are... well, hedge shaped. One stretch is waist height - easy. The majority I can just reach by extending my arms as far as I can (which always makes me feel nervous when I am wielding a power tool that would rip through flesh as easy as  it annihilates  thin branches). I have a beech hedge that I can only reach the top of by standing on a step ladder and over extending (even more terrifying) and a monstrous Lleylandi that reaches virtually as high as Jack's beanstalk. I would need to have over indulged on the entire Mars factory output to feel moved to tackle that particular beast.

There is a part of me that hates destroying all the vibrant fresh new growth that is striving to restore natural chaos to my order but then it is oddly satisfying to be the master of your own little world and beating that unruly privet back into neatness and symmetry.

My hedge trimmer is not exactly girlie in design. It has a big old blade and it is HEAVY. I have to take regular breaks to stop my fingers seizing up with the exertion of holding down the slightly awkward 'on' lever and the safety lever. When I stop, I can still feel my arm muscles vibrating at the same frequency as the cutting blades. That feeling can last for a long time after the final hedge has been trimmed.

Is it worth it?

I am not sure if I have worked all my major muscle groups with the right combination of cardio vascular exercise or even used up a fraction of the empty calories that I consumed in weakness, but I do feel less guilty and the garden looks hell of lot better!