Pathless
Look, no more path. All gone.
Path foundations all gone
Not only have I removed all the foundations, but I have broken them up into easily liftable chunks and piled them up neatly out of the way.
Path foundations stacked up ready to go to the tip
The reasons for my success are (1) much of the path foundation was much softer than the part I was trying to break up at first and (2) I changed my strategy after reading about how to break up concrete on the Internet. My old strategy was to chip out a line across the block and keep going until it cracked along that line. This produced nice neat cuboid-shaped blocks, but was very slow when tackling hard foundation. I found that if I bashed the edge (the edge furthest from the fence, obviously) then often the foundation would crack after only a few blows. This did not usually produce nice shaped blocks, but I didn’t care by then. When it came to breaking up the large chunks into smaller ones, I piled the blocks on top of each other, about three high. This made it easier to bash them with the pickaxe, and also meant that the vibrations couldn’t be absorbed by the soft, uniform soil. Sometimes, I managed to break up the blocks underneath the one I was trying to break, which obviously saved effort.
I now need to fill the space left by the path with soil from elsewhere, and I can plant things in the little rectangle at the left hand side of the patio. I will do that next week, weather permitting.
It rained on Wednesday night, for a change, and on Thursday morning it seemed a good time to turf the hole left by the reshaping of the patio.
Gap in lawn very badly turfed over
I dug up some strips of turf from another area of the garden and turfed the space very badly. It does not need to be done well because in spring 2012 (plus slippage) I will dig up the turf and reseed the lawn. I just want it to be mowable until then.
With all the work I am doing, it is easy to forget to look at the plants, some of which are putting on a really good display.
Peony in bloom
In the temporary pond, the iris has been flowering for a week or two now.
Iris laevigata 'Midnight'
And if I had known how beautiful the kalmia was, I would have got one a long time ago. Its flowers look like iced gems (without the biscuit).
Kalmia with iced gem flowers