Absolutely cream-crackered...

So, five steps back in, two to go, but I am out of cement and sand. Even if I did have them I am devoid of any energy to do much let alone stagger inside for a drink and a calming blog.

Current developments:

The huge volumes of cement...

Four in!

Five in!

Now to have a nice cup of tea and ponder when to pick up my daughters who are desperate to be home early.

The mystery of the growing railway sleepers...

Ten years ago I buried some rubbish soil behind the sleeper steps towards the back of the garden. I remember flippantly saying "in ten years I will have to deal with that". Actually it was eight years. Ah well. I am certainly paying the penalty. It is brutal hard work, and I am missing the pint of blood I donated yesterday!

I have had to dig out beneath and behind each step and then mix cement to pour in. I am rubbish at cement mixing, and am also probably digging out too much so it is taking a long long time. I am not helped by the roots stretching across that make spadework very difficult, or the large stones I hid there so long ago.

You can see the progress I have made in the photos. It has been very very slow work, and as you can see from the last one, pretty exhausting.

3 down, four to go. This one had grown overnight. When I came to put it back the hole was 10cm too small!

And now for a smoothie!

Starting on the steps...

Glorious day today. I returned from clearing out my lab at school and found I had 30 minutes to spare before lunch and going to give blood.

So I had a play with the sleeper steps to see how big the job was. Initially the builders put the steps in, but I gave them the wrong instructions so had to redo it myself. I remember the sleepers being enormously heavy.


I found that they are not so heavy now! Partly due to me being stronger no doubt and partly due to their somewhat rotten state. Here the steps are with no sleepers. Lots of digging and cement mixing tomorrow I fear.

Mowing and a new mower

Today I bought a new hover mower, the cheapest flymo I could find (£62 from homebase). It is mostly to mow the verge in front of the house but I used it to cut the whole garden from top to bottom today. The blasting Sun had all but scorched the grass and there had been negligible growth for weeks. Then when the rains finally came last week up shot the seed heads. My cylinder mower doesn't touch them and I pay the girls 1p per one to keep them down, but the flymo is a bit more efficient, albeit more expensive.

Mowing the front of the house is less of a chore than I expected. It is not ours, but the contractors who maintain it hardly ever come. My neighbours have shamed me for years now by keeping their half very trim. I finally caved in when it was looking particularly tatty and strimmed it. I continued with the strimmer but it is not a long term solution. The verge looks a lot better for being mowed. Our neighbours have planted flowers too, but I am trying to avoid battle. But maybe some flowers around the street light would make it easier to mow? Aargh, stop me.

From Surprised Gar...

The raised beds are dismantled and waiting for a whole series of events before being put in to use, namely:

1) Relaying the sleeper steps on to cement beds - they are getting a bit wobbly.
2) Moving the wavy wooden stake line (90 degree clockwise rotation, but needs to key off the top of the steps).
3) Levelling the top garden where the beds are going to go.
4) Buying and laying black weed suppressant sheeting over the levelled garden
5) Buying and wheelbarrowing the tonnes (and loads of money's worth) of soil and bark that will be needed in the finished area.

I got the bill for the wood for the beds - a little over £350. There is a LOT of wood there and the beds are huge and unique so I think it is a reasonable deal especially when compared to pre-fab ones that are less robust and nasty. Without the mistakes and if I had ordered exactly the right volume of wood it would have been around £320 I imagine. C'est la vie.

The grass I top-dressed looks OK now, though unfortunately the soil was mixed with builders sand and there are some pretty large (5mm) stones in it that got through the sieve. I guess they will disappear over time.

The finished beds :)

In and out during the welcome rain today, I managed to finish the raised beds. One silly mistake cost me 30 minutes and meant I was glad for the extra wood. I also changed the design as I went along to make things easier. Pretty happy with the end result.

From Surprised Gar...

Now I just need to find the tonnes of soil to fill it, but this can wait. I have to level the final place for it and move a low wooden stake fence that I put in to keep the girls play bark in place. Moving the stakes is not too bad but the levelling is going to be nightmarish.

We were very pleased to have some relatively decent rain today, enough to slightly reload our aqueduct-fed water butts. I think it takes about 10 hours for them to fill though, so we need some serious rain!

Raised beds and sunflowers

Mum asked me why I was building raised beds today. Good question. I think it is because they are aesthetically pleasing and that I enjoy the process of building them. Anyway, here is the design and the progress so far. I have got faster and faster at sawing and chiselling but have also been conducting experiments on how much more comfortable it is to hit a chisel vs your knuckle. Ouch.

The vision:


Progress:


More progress (the only downer is that I seem to have ordered too much wood. I got a bit confused whilst juggling the maths and a 2 year old...):

I am embarrassingly pleased with them so far. I hope they fit! Still lots of work to do on the top garden before they can be put in their final resting place.


We also put in the family sunflowers. We each have one and the tallest wins.