Biting the Bullet

Hi there everyone 😀

The garden is feeling daunting this year. The weather hasn’t helped. It’s mid-April and I think we’ve only been out there twice so far. Once to remove all the pot saucers from under the pots … as everything was saturated … and once to clear the strawberry bed.

We haven’t even had a proper leaf clearing session … though the grass has had its first cut … not by me I hasten to add.

Looking at what needs doing it’s hard to know where to start … sheds need painting … pergola needs treating … arbour needs painting … fence needs painting … lots of patio needs jet washing … lots of pots need emptying or replacing … grass needs scarifying and that’s before we even start on weeding the borders.

We normally have a bit of a plan of attack to make sure we get through everything but last year, with spending so much time away, lots of jobs didn’t get done so are in dire need this year.

One job that has been on the cards for about three years now is to replace the raised bed which is pretty rotten and definitely at the end of its life …

We did make an enthusiastic start a few years ago when I emptied it of planting … but nothing has happened since and it is now full again of self set foxgloves and verbena … and plenty of weeds …

This week I had a bit of an epiphany and decided that if we waited until we had done all of the routine jobs, before starting in this bed, we would never get round to it.

So … in a break with our normal gardening programme … I decided to leave everything else and make the bed the priority.

It took a while to build up a bit of enthusiasm from Martin … as it will be a big job and not something that either of us feel that confident about … but after an afternoon of measuring and planning and then remeasuring and replanning we had at least decided on an approach …

We have decided to build the new bed, in the same footprint, with oak sleepers … in the hope that it’s not a job we will have to repeat in our lifetime.

As it is such a big job with lots of steps I’ve broken it down into sizeable chunks with the first being to remove all the plants we want to save and get rid of the weeds … a task which is easily within our gift …

The second step is to empty the bed of dirt … so a call was put into one of our friends to see if we could borrow some big bags to store the soil in whilst we go through the process of rebuilding the bed.

He turned up the following day with these so we really had no excuse for getting started and set ourselves the objective of at least emptying the bed before we next go away … which is about a week and a half away.

After a pretty busy week Thursday and Friday were looking good on the weather front so Thursday was the day to finally bite the bullet and get started. 

We managed to salvage lots of verbena … pots full of the stuff …

We also managed to replant all of the foxgloves around the garden and the phlox in a pot … and we soon had a nice bed free of plants and weeds …

It was then time to start breaking down the bed. We decided to take the front off which we hoped would make it easy to shovel out the soil …

This worked really well and, with a few rest stops, we managed to empty the larger part of the bed …

… and completely break it down …

We were both really hot and tired by then so decided it was time to tidy up and leave the rest for another day …

We’d done really well … nearly completing all of our preparation steps in one session. Another couple of hours and a trip to the tip and it will be time to order our sleepers …

… but not before our very good at measuring, and planning, friend Phil has had a look over our measurements 🙈

😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀