SLOW PROGRESS!

We have been off work for 11 days and the garden is far from complete! Rachel was in bed and unable to do much for the first week and the weather (rain) has hampered our progress - not that I am complaining because it gave us the chance to chill out a little and visit a few garden centres!

On Sunday the 20th of March I started to attack the the overgrown garden, cutting back grass and weeds. It was hard to know where to start and whether I should dig and pull or just chop back the growth first! I soon got the hang of it though and cut back the grass and it looked alot more manageable. The next afternoon, I did a bit more clearing, while Rachel slept off the anaethestic.

A giant mound of grass and weeds were piling up, and I got bored with cutting the grass and and digging the weeds, so I decided the next job was to attack the overgrown ivy, which virtually covered the whole of the back concrete brink wall. The ivy had obviously served its purpose very well, hiding that ugly wall, but now it had got to the stage where it was not clear whether the ivy was actually more hideous than the wall underneath!

Having pulled (by that I mean, attacked with a hammer and shears!) some of the ivy from the wall, I decided that a cheap pair of pruning shears were required. So armed with a good excuse, we planned the next day to visit Wilko's, a garden centre and to go look at the pink granite chippings we wanted to order.

Another purchase from Ebay arrived, our bistro garden patio table and chairs. We could not wait to test out the chairs, which are very comfortable! I can't wait until we are sat out in the garden with a glass of wine at our new patio table and chairs! Here they are!

The next day, 24th of March, after a Greggs

cornish pasty for brunch, we set off to visit CED Ltd (see links) in Langley Mill to check out the aggregates. Well, I may well be very sad to admit it, but I did get rather excited about the agregrates! The pink granite chipping were perfect - a lovely uniform colour of pink and light grey, 14mm size which is ideal (and hopefully large enough to stop cats pooing in our garden!) and damn cheap too! Delivery is a bit pricy at aprox £100 for 3 tonnes, but it will still work out cheaper than elsewhere. The staff were extremely friendly and helpful, and female, which makes a change! So I think we will be ordering 3 tonnes of pink granite, a few bags of purple slate, and a few bags of both black and red polished cobbles!

On the way back from Langley Mill, we stooped off at Shipley garden centre, which seemed to have a bit of a sale on. Having ripped off most of the Ivy we need some wicker type fence to cover the ugly grey wall, and to my suprise and delight they had a good range of of this type of fencing on sale! The wicker fence was reduced to about £40, but we spotted some bamboo fencing - which would work well with the Japanese theme - which I seem to be moving further towards everyday - which was only £20 for the 2m x 4m that we needed! We bought it! Along with a double shephards hook, which I will hang the two pink glass lanterns I bought from Ikea.

Over the bank holiday weekend, I attacked the ivy somewhat more successfully, now that I had the help of my new 99p Wilko's pruning shears. The ivy came down as far as the shed and we fixed bamboo cane fence to the wall. We also made a couple of trips to the recyling centre, taking the grass and ivy cutting, and losing one of our big green waste bags (£1.99 wilko's - I cannot tell you how FAB these bags are!) when trying to empty it into the skip and the whole thing fell in! Oops! Luckily, I had purchased a couple more of the these bags in Wilko's, so we had three to work with which was perfect because that was all that we could fit into the back of Rachel's Ka!

Rachel did and excellent job of painting our side of the neighbours fence, which looks like it might fall down at any minute! And with the new bamboo fence now in place, it was certainly time for a well earned rest which inclued a couple of bottles of wine, a few spliffs and loud music (sorry to our neighbours!). A hang over the next day (Tuesday the29th of March), meant no much work was done, but I did manage to clear some weeds and plants from the old bedding area.

Now that I am back at work, the time for the garden will be limited to evenings and weekends, and once again the rain today is not boding well for any work to be done tonight. Ideally, I would like the garden cleared by Saturday evening ready for the purchasing of sand and cement and laying out of weed control membrane and grantite setts on the Sunday. I forsee at leat 2 trips to the recyling centre with some heavy bags of soil, grass and weeds!