The Builder's been a-gardening

Well, The Builder has been having an exciting time. He’s been making the most of the unseasonably warm weather and has been playing in the garden. And he’s making steady progress.

He has finally managed to get the fence up at the bottom behind the shed, where the only thing keeping the sheep (where are the sheep? Haven’t seen them for weeks and weeks!) out was a large roll of wire. This was complicated by the presence of a very large holly tree just on the other side of the fence, but close enough to be in the way.

He has brought a brush cutter and cut the grass in the orchard. It now needs raking over and all the rubbish that is lying about hoiked out and sorted through. Then it needs cutting again and it will start to look faintly respectable.

And he’s started taking down the laburnum at the back. It needs to come out because it is slap bang where we want to put the chicken run eventually. Plus it doesn’t produce anything you can eat. Its flowers are, in fact, poisonous. Has to go. I need the space for food production. And we wouldn’t want to poison the chickens, when they eventually arrive! So, he’s chopped down, with his little saw, all the branches and half the trunk and has made a start chopping away at the base of the trunk. Then he lit a bonfire. It was burning smartly when I got home. A nice still day with a light breeze blowing in from the south west, so the smoke, such as it was, blew out into the fields rather than back to the neighbouring houses. Marlo was fascinated. He sat and watched it from the dining room window until I came home and went down to inspect proceedings in person, when he came down too.

We have also been investigating getting a skip to rid ourselves of the bulk of the rubbish. We reckon it will cost around £150. Best start saving, then!

I think The Builder is planning to turn his attention to the allotment now. As I said earlier, we need to get the beds up there up together for mid March for the potatoes (I’ve got 3 kg each of five different sorts of seed potatoes so will need lots of beds!), earlier if possible for the shallots. The weather is set fair for the next few days. Mild and sunny during the days and absolutely freezing overnight is what we are promised until Tuesday or so. And I am not working this weekend. Not either day. Two whole days off in a row. Gosh! I can supervise lots of digging!!!!!

Steve Next Door came round yesterday evening. He’d been to a farm up Temple Normanton way and bought some eggs. Bought half a dozen for us too. Very nice of him. We now have lots of eggs. I’d better make a cake :-)