A rather nice new area

image from Magnific.com

You may recall that the front patio area has undergone a number of iterations over the last few years, and whilst we're not yet at the stage suggested in the picture above it's something nice to aim for 😉

When we knew that the wall would have to be rebuilt, the only sensible thing to do was to completely clear the area to give George plenty of space to work in.

Once he'd finished and cleared out the leftover bits of rubbly stone, we decided that we didn't actually want to rebuild raised beds the same as we'd had before.

There were a few slabs leftover from the new border that George had done in the shared drive on the other side of the rebuilt wall... 

...so we asked him to get a few more to make this into a proper patio area.  It took a fair bit of fiddling about on his part to get the new paving laid as evenly as possible!  Our garden is very tricky with the different levels, and an awful lot of the time what the eye sees and what the spirit level says are two rather different things 😳  

As I've already mentioned, we will be adding some planters along both the far side and front of the area to make it a tad safer!  We're going to build a raised bed along the garden side of the wooden wall, up to a similar height, which I will plant with shrubs moved from various areas of the garden.  This will create a good visual barrier across the front.

I told you last year, after my health woes, that we have decided that it would be sensible to rehash a lot of the front garden, and altering the borders somewhat is part of those plans.  This is why I'm going to be "shopping" from the plants and shrubs I already have in the garden rather than going ahead and buying in new ones.  I'm afraid the garden is going to look rather messy and upside-down for quite some time to come😏   

Once the new raised bed has been built, I will feel comfortable about moving these wooden tubs across to sit alongside the new garden wall.  Rather than leaving an expanse of bare concrete, I may well relocate the old wheelbarrow (that we turned into a planter) here from the other side of the garden.  

We moved our old garden bench out to the new patio as it looked very open and bare!  We will be buying new furniture for the space in due course, but will take our time and wait until we've got the long planter built and the tubs moved across.

Even on an overcast day, we really are so lucky to have such lovely views from our new patio 😊

As usual I am running way behind with sharing photos of what we've been doing 😏 We actually started work down in the garden area last week but hopefully I'll get you all caught up with our latest trials and tribulations soon!

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)   

Reading round-up: May 2026

image from Freepik

The Blitz Detective Investigates - The Pimlico Murder: Mike Hollow

One Lost Soul (The Hidden Murders Book 1): JM Dalgliesh

Bury Your Past (The Hidden Murders Book 2): JM Dalgliesh

Kill Our Sins (The Hidden Murders Book 3): JM Dalgliesh

Tell No Tales (The Hidden Murders Book 4): JM Dalgliesh

Hear No Evil (The Hidden Murders Book 5): JM Dalgliesh

The Dead Call (The Hidden Murders Book 6): JM Dalgliesh

Slimming World May/June 2025

Slimming World July 2025

I have come across a new-to-me author of detective novels ~ JM Dalgliesh.  His books are set in Norfolk, a county I lived in for much of my childhood, and I am enjoying reading them very much.  He also has two other series of detective novels, one set in Yorkshire and the other on the Isle of Skye.  Obviously I will be giving them a whirl in due course 😉

I did read a couple more of the Blitz Detective novels during May but got a bit knocked off track by JM Dalgliesh's DI Janssen 😏 I also managed to catch up with two more issues of last year's subscription to Slimming World magazine but still have a fair few of them to get through, plus this year's subscription is adding to the magazine pile.  As we've already started to get pretty busy with all the work out in the garden, I suspect I may be a tad too tired for much reading over the coming weeks.  Perhaps I'll manage to get more magazines caught up with instead, as they don't require quite the same amount of concentration as novels 😄

Finishing touches and another little issue!

image from Magnific.com

Of course, we can never seem to just have one task to get done without another, usually totally unrelated, rearing its ugly head 😏

Whilst he was taking a coffee break, George happened to look up at our roof and noticed that the leading around this chimney was coming adrift *sigh*  So that was another little job that none of us had previously noticed that needed doing.  He got the lead all fixed back where it was supposed to be and touched up the base of the chimney stack.  Hopefully it won't take too long for the new paint to "weather" and look more like the old layer!

A job that we did know needed to be done was repairing the coping on the front wall, as it was cracked in a number of places.  It all looks nice and tidy again now. 

The final task connected with the rebuild was going from the photo above...

... to this!  Obviously we didn't want any plants or weeds growing along our freshly rebuilt wall, and rather than slapping some stone chipping in there we decided to extend the paved area instead.  We were unable to find slabs to match the existing flagstones, so decided the best option would be to go for something contrasting.  It's made a rather nice edging to the original paving and finished the whole area off very well indeed.  Now we've got to set-to and sort out the bloody garden 😳

Little words of wisdom

 

Aaaaand relax!

image from Magnific.com

Until the next crisis comes along, at any rate 😏

I left you on Friday with the rebuilding almost complete, with virtually all that was left to do was put back those lovely old coping stones.

As I said, because of not having all of the old stones available to reuse, the new wall is lower than it was previously...

...as you can see from the much smaller and lower shaped section where the two walls meet.

We will be adding some planters along here in due course to stop folk toppling over into the shared driveway on the other side 😳

We will do likewise along the wooden retaining wall, to provide a visual barrier, as there is another drop there ~ ah, the joys of living on a hill with a garden sloping in two directions 😏

Of course, now that this length has been rebuilt, the garden side of the other section is looking even more scraggy than it was before!  At some point we will get George back in to re-do the mortar along there to tidy it up.

The new pillar really helps to marry the two sections of wall together...

...and distract from the straight and not-so-straight lines 😄

George then re-did the mortar on the rest of the wall...

...which made it look so much better!  I'm really happy that the dratted crocosmia is no more.  We filled in the gap with more stone chippings which has widened this end of the drive a little.  It all looks so much tidier now and we (and our neighbour!) are extremely pleased with the end result ~ thank you for all your hard work, George 😊

Beware the YouTube rabbit hole!

image from Magnific.com

As promised ~ and before I forget again 😏 ~ here in no particular order are some of my favourite sewing and refashioning YouTube links:

https://www.youtube.com/@StephanieCanada

https://www.youtube.com/@gettheetothestitchery

https://www.youtube.com/@rachelmaksy

https://www.youtube.com/@shesewsseams

https://www.youtube.com/@AshLG

https://www.youtube.com/@tmyershandmade978

https://www.youtube.com/@HandCandylady/videos

https://www.youtube.com/@b_stephanie

https://www.youtube.com/@AnnasKitchenAndStitchin

And lastly, although he's not a sewing/refashioning YouTuber, I really love watching Jude's weekly videos about life in his cottage and garden:

https://www.youtube.com/@rewildingjude

Hope you enjoy them all as much as I do 😊

Peace...

 

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)  

Let the (re)building commence!

image from Magnific.com

Before I continue with the saga of the garden wall I thought I'd let you know that despite the weather warming up, the smell of decomposing rat seems to have dissipated 👏 We did have a brief episode of flies suddenly appearing in the dining room, which were coming up through cracks in the floorboards of the cupboard under the stairs.  Thankfully there wasn't a huge number of the blighters and that, too, seems be over.  I admit that I am still a wee bit paranoid about every little creak but hopefully things have calmed down now 🤞 

Anyhoo, back to the wall!  George had got this far before we went south.  I mentioned yesterday that there was slightly more of an issue with the rest of the wall than had at first been apparent.  It seems that when this section had been rebuilt back in the mists of time it had been lined up with the rest of the wall, which must have been bowing out to some degree even then.

Of course, George was rebuilding in a nice, straight, line which meant that there was going to be a discrepancy between the two sections of wall 😏

The solution he came up with was to incorporate a pillar between the two sections.

This actually helped in a couple of ways...

  ...it added some support to the section that wasn't being rebuilt, as well as giving both sections a point where they could be "tied in".

It also helped to disguise the fact that one section is properly in line whereas the other definitely isn't 😳

It's a double-sided wall, with the void between the two sections filled with concrete and some of the more "rubbly" pieces of the old stone.  I was a very happy bunny when George sent me a photo update whilst we were away, showing that the garden was now contained by the wall once again! 

Obviously George didn't end up with the same amount of stone available to use as the original builders had started off with.  As I've mentioned previously some of the old stone had decayed too much to be reused, and of course some had to be incorporated into the new pillar. 

Consequently the rebuild is lower than the old wall was.  You can see in the photo above how the garden wall was built into the wall running across the garden, which itself was built into the side of the house.

You may not recall but our greenhouse was built on the other side of that wall.  Like the garden border wall, this was also not in good condition.  The greenhouse was built with concrete blocks, the full-height back wall of which was "tied" to this old wall to stabilise it.

Looking good from both sides 😊

The photo above shows more clearly how much out of line the old section of wall actually is.  Had we had more funds available we may well have had the whole length of the wall rebuilt.  Unfortunately we just didn't feel that we could afford to spend that amount of money on what would in effect be aesthetics as opposed to a genuine need for rebuilding the whole wall.  It is what it is ~ after all, you do have to cut your coat according to your cloth 😉

You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs...

image from Magnific.com

This particular "omelette", of course, being our pesky garden wall 😏

George began the task of dismantling the stones, cleaning and saving as much as possible to be used in the rebuild, including all the lovely, hand-shaped, beautifully weathered coping stones.

A lot of the stones were in good enough condition to be re-used but not all of them, unfortunately.

The original wall had been built straight onto the ground, with no foundation.  These two big pieces of granite were a tad too much for George to move far, so he just left them in situ!

He was as surprised as we were to find that the "good" soil went all the way down.  Those weird little things hanging down, by the way, are the pins we used to hold the weed membrane in place 😄

We had quite the pile of demolished wall sitting in the shared driveway for some time.  Although the drive isn't suitable for vehicles to pass along it, we are nevertheless very lucky that our neighbour is so understanding 😊

George numbered all the coping stones, putting them to one side to be placed back on the rebuilt wall in due course.  Looking at the section of wall which wasn't being rebuilt, you can see that there was a little more going on there than had first been apparent, which meant an addition to the remedial work was going to be needed 😳

It was a relief to see the concrete foundation in place so that the rebuild could get underway.  I must confess that I found this stage of the proceedings as worrying as discovering the dire state of the wall in the first place.  I was very concerned that the garden would simply collapse with no wall to support it!  George reassured me that the soil was well enough compacted not to move but I admit that I wasn't totally convinced, even though he obviously knows what he's talking about ~ and you'll no doubt be pleased to hear that he was of course perfectly correct😄