Dodging the downpours

"Mr Grumpy" from next-door, looking down his nose at us when we spotted him from the living room window the other day 😏  I think he's a bit annoyed that we are altering "his" garden 😉

We got some more work done last week but it really was a case of having to do bits here and there between the showers ~ some of which were actually rather bloody heavy!  Of course all the rain is also making the soil pretty damn heavy and claggy, so even when it wasn't raining it wasn't particularly nice to dig in the stuff 😳 

I had to make an effort, though, as the plants I'd ordered from Shire Plants arrived and I really needed to get them in the garden.  I started with the new little herb bed that I had finally managed to get cleared out.  We don't use a lot of fresh herbs in the kitchen, so the few I have now planted are ample for our needs.  I already had the chives, which came out of the planter which matches the one now on the new patio.  I added rosemary, oregano, two different varieties of thyme, and mint ~ the latter (hopefully!) safely ensconced in a pot, obviously 😏

The second planter from the kitchen courtyard has now been beefed up, given a few more coats of wood stain, and put in its new position on the patio.  Adrian made inroads into the soil mountain in the back garden when he filled up the planter; he then moved the soil that was left and dumped it into the empty raised bed in the front garden had been used as a holding bed for the plants I had dug up and wanted to keep.

He's very pleased to get the soil shifted, even though it will have to be moved onto a tarpaulin next year so that we can dismantle the bed to re-use it.  He really wanted to clear the area in the back garden so that he can easily access our second log-store over the coming months.  With the weather being so changeable there doesn't seem to be much point in trying to get the last raised bed in position in the front garden, not least because it will need a few coats of wood stain.  We may just get the new sleepers ordered and set them in place on the days when it isn't bucketing down with rain 😏

I finished off the first planter on the patio by adding an alpine-type plant either side of the rose.  I had already put in some London Pride plants along the back ~ there were a lot of them in the garden when we bought the house so I dig 'em up and use them to fill in gaps where needed!

I've saved two of the little alpine plants for the second planter and used the rest of them to make a little rock garden in the old wheelbarrow.  I made use of some of the fine stone chippings we had originally used for the paths between the old kitchen garden beds, both to mix in with the compost to help it drain more freely and to top off around the plants.  The pebbles and cobblestones were a mix of some we'd brought with us when we moved, and some we'd found in the garden here.

It's a simple little display but I am very pleased with how it's turned out 😊