Lawn Edging

Before

Digging a trench takes longer but is much the best with this stuff

Then you lay it out

Bang in a nail every 2 or 3 "A"s - if they don't go in I just try at a different angle

Help is useful

Finished

Spring 2013, here we go again.

Finally the Sun comes out and sucks us in to the garden.  Lots of tidying up to do.  No photos of my completely sorting out the steps to the garden but they look an awful lot better.

Harriet was a brilliant help.  Here she is clearing the bottom of the wisteria.

Job done!

My traditional "first day of Spring" job of rotating the compost heap.

Tying this in savaged my forearms but it is now tied in.  You can see the swept terrace here.

The small trampoline has been dismantled and offered to a friend.

Erica surveying the scene.  The bare wall behind had been covered with a honeysuckle but Tamsin attacked it with great vigour.

Allotment Arrangements

The responsibility of the allotment has been weighing on us.  Thomas was seriously considering ditching it but we've come to an a compromise.  The space is too big for two plus three children plus full time working but in time we think in time we'll have more time and can do it justice. So, we now have a strimmer to keep the grassy parts beyond us short and will plant what we can plant, and slowly work our way across. The good news is that the parts that we cultivated last year appear very easy to dig over.

In the last couple of days we dug up the rest of the spuds and stuck in some leeks and onions.

Family at work

H planting onions

Trying to make lots of level beds on our sloping plot

Onions

Drying them was very difficult this year with all the wet weather.

The end of the mulberry

The end of the mulberry has been foretold by Thomas mum since the first time she saw it in 2000.  We've stuck to it doggedly in the hope that it would perk up.

Sadly buying a tree we'd not looked at was not a good idea. About 1/3 died over the winter so we bit the bullet and got rid of it today. It was surprisingly easy and only took an hour or so.

Ericsson Ear

Metal fatigue after ear wiggling by our youngest had lead to a brittle right ear. Today Erica took a tumble and lost her lug :-(

Herbaceous

Lovely purples. Pretty pleased with its progress, but no sign of the "red hot pokers" I was looking forward to this year after all the watering last.

Also I've placed the remaining corn in the allotment. We're down to 25 but I suspect a few won't make it.