We had a dry day today and I spent from 1 o'clock until dusk out in the garden, yay! I dug over the part that gets flooded (read about that here) and found that there were paving slabs underneath the soil with just gravel thrown on top. I know that next-doors pipes will still cause problems until they are fixed, but at least with the removal of all the submerged slabs, the water will have somewhere to go and it mightn't be so bad, fingers crossed. It was hard and heavy work, but I feel all the better for it and so glad that a start has been made. It's time to stop feeling sorry for myself and just get on with it.
I also managed to tidy up a bit - when we moved in we had so much to do that the plants in pots were just littered around the garden. I've retrieved the ones that haven't been squashed to death by Big Foot Benji and put them in an orderly fashion, somewhere out of his reach .... I hope.
Big Foot Benji (in our previous garden)
My next job is to prune the shrubs and climbers on the fences before the new Spring growth appears. The garden may look like a disaster area just now, but I'm happy to see that there are quite a lot of good shrubs already here, ones that I would have chosen myself, such as pyracantha, buddleia and winter jasmine, etc.
It's been such an enjoyable day and the icing on the cake was looking up to see some long-tailed tits feeding on the fat balls I'd hung out. I also saw one of the wrens (hubby's seen two in the garden), bobbing about in amongst the shrubs, a blackbird winked at me from the fence (honest, it did!) and a collared dove sat atop next-door's roof calling to its mate, "Oi, it's Lesley.... we've found her, the grubs over here."
Illustration by Annette Abolins ~ to see more of her work, go here.
I'm back to being a happy gardener..... bring on the Spring! :D
