Garden updates

Hi

The back garden is taking shape. It's gone from the wasteland, sorry I meant not very pretty garden, it was before as previously posted....

To a patio courtesy of Steven the builder......

And is now getting the rest done which we're doing ourselves. Although the patio is a huge improvement already and we've found the garden is not too bad a size, now that we're using more than the small bit beside the back door.

So, the first stage was to construct a raised bed for one of the sides. I'm really looking forward to filling it up with some chicken poo (yes, chicken poo, mmmmm, it smells nice) and lots and lots of soil which is going to be dug out from the bit-at-the-back-which-is-going-to-be-a-pergola. And it will be really, really good when I can fill it with plants, flowers and herbs but that might be a bit way off yet.

This is what it looked like after the builders had finished, a good hardcore base.

And these are the pebbles delivered to the front garden by our local builders' yard. You should try shifting a tonne of medium-sized pebbles, it does good things to your arms!

The first part was to put down the special matting which doesn't let the weeds through. There are no pix of that, as I was busy concentrating on the matting. Then, it was using the wheelbarrow to cart the tonne of medium-sized pebbles (have I mentioned it was a tonne before) from the big bag to the back garden. My arm muscles are thanking me!

Then my husband and his mate made the raised bed from sleepers also delivered to the front garden. There were power tools involved....

And a good old fashioned hand saw.

And safety gloves, sunglasses, a radio, and big wood screws.

And ginger ale. Lashings and lashings of it. No Famous Five or Secret Seven though!

And fixing black plastic to the inside to stop the earth from leeching through. And lots of hammering.

So this is what it looks like just now, very sturdy and actually quite a decent-sized planter. Waiting for me to stop typing, go and out some more matting down, and start laying chicken manure and transferring soil from the back part into the wheelbarrow after it's going through a garden sieve. Can you tell I'm stalling by typing lots of unnecessary words? 

And then, once that is filled up, the last part of building starts - the decking and roofed pergola on top. The pergola looks like this just now.......

It doesn't really scream 'sophisticated outside dining experience' quite yet!