What a difference...

a pair of young women wielding various "tools of destruction" can make in a morning😄

You may recall my sad lament regarding how vigorously the fuchsia beside the tiny little nature pool had grown.  Like the rest of the garden it had become totally overgrown over the last 18 months or so, but I have to admit that it wasn't an easy shrub to keep under control at the best of times.  So Adrian and I asked Beverly and Lyndi if they could help us do something with it.  They are both quite keen on a spot of demolition and were kind enough to come over last weekend to sort it out ~ and all we had to do was feed and water the pair of 'em😉

Ta-daa!  What a huge difference removing it has made!  There is obviously a lot of work yet to be done, but we won't be tackling it until next year as we are still plugging away at the rest of the garden.  I expect we will end up deconstructing the area and starting again, certainly in the vicinity of the pool at any rate.  I am considering taking out the plants on the right-hand side and extending the size of the pool to make a tiny marshy area.

I'm trying to rein-in my butterfly mind, though, as it's going to be a number of months before we can make a start on this new project!  I was thinking about it in the shower the other day and obviously not concentrating on what I was picking up ~ I ended up washing with my "detoxifying" seaweed shampoo instead of  the "soothing and nourishing" coconut body wash😳

The deconstruction/reconstruction in the old fruit cage area is still progressing albeit a tad slowly this week as the weather is rather mixed.  Whilst Adrian was working on the bed at the front I got the two holly bushes dug out from the one at the back, and moved them to fill the gap in the hedge border.

Good news, by the way, on the hedge border front.  Our neighbours have started a massive clearing out exercise of their thorny/prickly shrubs, so hopefully I won't have to contend with them encroaching into our garden in the future 😊 

As well as the holly bushes I also dug out the two ferns that were in the same bed, along with two from the border that runs across the garden in front of the dining room.  Before I realised just how hard it would be to transplant, I had thought about moving the fuchsia into this bed.  Now that our neighbours are having this clear out in their garden and I don't have to try to "fight back" with my own big shrubs, I felt it would be much better to make this into a fern bed instead.  There really are four ferns in the bed, it's just that two are very small ~ probably because they were being rather smothered by weeds!  I have two more in the border alongside the path that runs from the front gate, and I'll hopefully get them moved into the bed soon.

I can't quite believe how long it took me to move these six plants ~ I was out there beavering away for about three bloody hours!  The couple that had been in the bed with the holly bushes were relatively easy to dig out, but it was hard going getting the other two out of that overgrown border 😒

And to finish off, here's a cute scene in the central raised bed in the back patio garden: a little slice of life imitating art 👏