Ruth and Peter: Holidays, family events, friends and much more from 2012 onwards... : Another onslaught on the garden...

Back from two days in Paris (too blasé to take photographs) where we had two excellent meals and visited two museums as well as getting in a day's work (Peter) and a day at my old club catching up with friends (me). A day in Norwich catching up on laundry - amazing what a tyranny that is. When is someone going to invent a machine that knows when the laundry basket is full and washes, irons and folds - and a very enjoyable evening out with one of Peter's PhD student from years ago and his lovely family.

Then off to Southwold. On Saturday afternoon we did some odd jobs around the house, gluing together a table that had become wonky, fixing lights up and positioning them round the house, organising bedding and generally planning our renovation campaign. Since we won't pick up a paint brush until the builders have done their stuff we are turning our energies on the overgrown garden.

The fruits of Rupert's labours

The reject pile

Rupert had done an excellent job when he stayed there last week cutting down trees/bushes and bagging them up.

On Sunday morning the sun shone now and then and the temperature went up and Peter and I got stuck in. I uprooted various plants that had become too woody or were in the wrong place, dug around pulling out root systems and sending soil back on the bed where it belonged, cleared out more pots, weeded, cut suckers off the bay tree etc. etc. It was hard work! Peter attacked the pile of wood that Rupert had left and sawed it up into kindling and helped me with the heavy lifting.

Sawing up kindling

Gradually we are making piles of stuff that needs to be thrown out and piles of pots etc that can be kept.

The keep pile

Mrs W had a penchant for putting things in pots or dustbins. Fortunately we found that the root systems hadn't escaped through the bottoms of the pots so we can move these about for incorporation later into flower beds.

Looking for a new location...

Unfortunately the walls of the raised beds are in a poor state as trees planted too close to the edges have expanded their root systems. As we clear and look round we're trying to imagine what to do with various spaces in the garden. A garden shed is definitely on the list as the present system of sticking everything in a corner and covering it with a prehistoric piece of hardboard doesn't do much for the quality of tools!