There is a lovely saying, “I’m too busy looking after my own grass to notice if anyone else’s is greener.”

And I’m about to get even busier as last weekend I started training at Usk College to become a Pilates teacher.

I remember thinking it would be a bit tricky fitting it in when I signed up and there is always an optimistic part of me that thinks ‘it’ll be fine by the time it comes around’.

Of course it is always ‘fine’ but not without huge effort.

It is the transitions that I find trickier as I get older.

Most of my days (and evenings, and weekends) are spent in shorts, a vest, a straw hat, gardening gloves and boots with secateurs in my back pocket and a dog lead around my waist.

Whilst that look won’t work for college, to be honest there aren’t huge changes to be made – just ditch the secateurs, hat, gloves, boots and dog lead and just change my shorts and vest – but I still find it challenging!

Bizarre really, of all the unexpected things that have caught me out about ‘getting older’, disliking transition (and change) has been, and continues to be, one of the biggest hurdles.

You would think that gardening for nearly 40 years would have got me used to all that. In nature, everything is transitioning and changing all the time.

It is said that, ‘Nothing stays still. If it isn’t growing, then it’s dying.’ Although, I guess there are periods of dormancy as well though.

Anyway – apart from the grass, things are certainly growing in the garden at the moment.

As already mentioned, I always keep a pair of secateurs in my back pocket or holster and am forever snipping away at belligerent brambles, deadheading roses and cutting back over-enthusiastic climbers from windows, gateways and other accesses.

I think it’s the best you can hope for at this time of year – the boys tease me that I drag a bulk bag around various gardens like Linus, Charlie brown’s best friend in the comic strip, Peanuts, drags his security blanket behind him.

Despite many improvements in gardening tools an old bulk bag, or builders bag, is still the best thing to put everything you cut back into. Just keep testing the weight and don’t fill it beyond your carrying capacity!

You can even get little trolleys for moving them about now, although I won’t be investing in one of those as I still find a wheelbarrow is another thing that hasn’t really been superseded.

Something I will be investing in very soon is a fabulous pair of Talolo Cowgirl Wellies.

Once purchased, I’ll obviously be wearing mine anywhere and everywhere (as I’m also now a line dancing convert) but they are just the best wellies for Festivals too.

A friend decorated her own wellies with Sharpie pens as a last minute wardrobe twist before last weekend’s Latitude Festival and did quite a good job but I will definitely be ‘adding to basket’ a fab’luss pair of Talolo’s any day soon.

I wonder if I could get away with wearing them to college …..