To stand in the path of progress!

Having finished off filling one skip and starting another Bjorn took pity on me and finished off filling the second skip in half the time it took me to fill a quarter if the skip. 

I got through half of this in a day, Bjorn did the second half in about 2 hrs.

So I went back to the drawing board, quite literally, and did a sketch of the proposed garden. For my birthday Bjorn and the girls had got me an drawing app and pen for the iPad so that I could get back into sketching my ideas.  At first it was a little strange getting the hang of all the brush strokes and pen sizes but I think I've got the hang of it now.  Bjorn tells me that it is the same app that David Hockney uses but I think I have quite a way to go to ever match him!

view of garden from side of house

Having visualised the garden afresh I got down to the cutting and hammering of stakes.  No we're not having a sudden plague of vampires, though the garden does look like Buffy's been on a the rampage.  Having dug out the foundations for the terraces and paths we needed to figure out the finished floor levels and ground levels to know how much soil to move around the garden. It would be no good having finished the terraces to then discover that the lawn was too high or too low. So we now have loads if little wooden stakes poking out of the ground right across the garden.   There is still quite a lot is soil to be moved but that will have to wait until we have built the raised border. 

Buffy had been very busy

I'd love to make this out of Coe-ten steel but my budget goes nowhere near that kind of cost. So soft wood sleepers it is. We have to have a raised border on one side as our road is on a slope and my neighbours garden is higher than ours. I dont particularly like sloping borders unles they ate part of a large landscape so raised border it is. We have two problems here. Firstly it is against my neighbours fence and to get a decent height we have to go higher than the bottom of her fence so that means creating a raised box (more wood = more cost). Secondly the bumble bee nest is slap bang in the middle!! So on some quiet evening  we have to pluck up the courage and carefully move it.  This I am not looking forward to. 

very gorgeous example of a cor-ten retaining wall

I am looking forward to ordering 15 bulk bags of MOT type 1. (For those not in the know, thats crushed limestone sub base.  If you lay paving stone on just sand and soil it will soon move and you get a wonky trip fest of a surface that is just asking for a compensation claim).  Once that is down the garden will really begin to take shape. 

Being a be prepared kinda gal, (don't laugh those who know me, I really am these days) and looking at my stony soil I realise that it is never going to do to lay turf on that. So out comes the soil sieve and I begin the twist and shake all over again. After six barrow loads of pebbles (thrown onto the terrace) I admit defeat and tell Bjorn that we need to order a couple if tonnes if premier quality top soil for the lawn.  Laying turf on stony soil is not going to achieve a flat surface and laying turf is all in the preparation. 

my fourth barrow load!!!

Having neglected my allotment and my running for a couple of weeks I dive into both head first.  The allotment had turned into a jungle of knee high weeds. So to the delight of a brazen blackbird couple I furiously pulled and dug till I was red faced and they were full if worms and bugs.  Not only did I discover a couple if young black currants that I had planted but also two whole rows of lettuce and spinach that I had given up on ever sprouting.   It's a good job that I did get to the allotment as there is a visit from the councillors next week and I really don't want a letter berating me on the state of my plot. 

mothers little helper

Now a while back in a moment of madness, having sworn after Paris 2008 that I would never do it again,    I signed up to do the Cardiff half marathon in October.  I've been slowly, very slowly, getting used to running again and had got up to doing 5km without walking or collapsing in a tearful heap. I hadn't run for a week and a half for various rubbish excuses "I'm tired, I have to wait in for the skip delivery, I've just eaten". So I finally went out again and had a terrible run across greenham common. I managed 15 minutes before expletives flew out of my mouth and my legs stopped.  Feeling very grumpy I looked around and I saw a magnificent sight, a common spotted orchid Dactylorhiza fuchsii. It is quite common (though I've never seen one before) and it is definitely spotted.  It gets its name from the spotty leaves, green with big purple spots and has a spire of pink/white flowers.   That perked me up no end and I shuffled of back to finish my run. 

a great excuse to stop running!