Helen's Garden Renovation Project

The Garden Renovation Project has just had its best news since the project began – I have been made redundant from the day job and will be leaving just before Christmas. Obviously this means that I have much more time available to make Progress. It also means that I will have to start adding to this blog little bits of evidence of how good I would be in a new job, just in case any potential new employers start reading it to get some information about me.

I have started preparing the holes and foundation for the stepping stones, but the weather keeps being unsuitable. Either it is too cold, or too wet. I suppose this is what you would expect for November. The forecast for today was looking promising, but as it was still drizzling at nine o’clock and the sky looked very grey, I decided to postpone the task, thus displaying a flexible attitude and using my common sense. I cleared some more of the leaves up instead. There is a hole in my gardening gloves, but I am not afraid to get my hands dirty.

This week it has been dry some of the time, and on Monday and today I took the path foundations up. I was lucky – the foundation mix was very soft. It must have been at least 5 parts of sand to cement. Each section took only a few taps with the pickaxe to remove, and now, apart from needing to remove the crumbs, the job is finished. The temperature on Monday was ideal for heavy work – just a few degrees above freezing. Today it has been much milder and indeed, a bit warmer than was comfortable.

The path foundations broken up and stacked into piles

I also made a bit of progress on chopping up the remains of the bay tree, and gathered up some of the leaves. The beech tree next door, whose leaves they are, is now almost bare, so it will be worth putting in the effort next week to get rid of more leaves.

This is a significant milestone, because I have now undone all the things that I now think I did wrong when I had my first stab at making the garden, fifteen years ago. All the hard landscaping has been disposed of and all the plants that were in the wrong place have been dug up. From now on, the only way is forward. Unless I make some new mistakes, of course.

So I now find that the next job is to lay the first four stepping stones. I have the hardcore (lots), cement and sand and there are only three possible reasons for delaying the job. One is that my forearms are a bit trembly from all that pickaxing and lifting heavy bits of mortar, and need a rest. The other two are the weather: heavy rain, or a temperature that is too cold for making mortar.

Every time autumn comes along, I realise I have forgotten about the sheer quantity of leaves that come down and which I have to get rid of.

Leafy overview of the right hand side of the garden

Since my last entry, I have filled in the hole left by the bay tree (near enough) and taken up the slabs of the path. I still need to break up the foundation – after removing the leaves.

I was not expecting a lot of autumn colour from my new plants, because they are so young, but one of my blueberries has gone a beautiful mixture of purple and red.

Red leaves on blueberry

The Euonymus europaeus Red Cascade has not managed any winged fruits, but is making a noticeable attempt to wear this autumn’s colours.

Euonymus colouring up for autumn

So, my tasks for November are to get rid of the leaves, chop up the bay tree into manageable pieces, and break up the path foundation. As usual, whether or not I achieve these will depend on the weather.