Aha! I've just written this all out in Hindi before I realised I had my translation thing turned onto Hindi....most peculiar. Anyway, I took these photos of the garden last week, and now in the meantime it's already changed but it'll give you an idea.

View from the end of the passageway leading from our backdoor.


Some of the raised section.


The raised section edge with our seeds that were planted a bit late in the season and are still catching up!


View from the top!

On the left of the photo is some pale concrete in the shape of a toilet base...more about that later. (I know, you're very lucky).

So, last Sunday we decided that the sun was shining, we had a few hours to kill (we don't work on Sundays afterall), we'd plant up the last few seedlings into the long pots we'd extracted with my skill and dedication (and £3.97) from Wilkinsons a couple of days before. However, once we got out there and the yukky gravel threatened to take over my will to plant, Dusband lovingly and kindly offered to edge the decking with some of it and then bag the rest up to be stored for when we move out in case the landlord doesn't like it being exposed.

Whilst I was clearing the gravel from the back I came across some random curling old lino. No way was I going to have a lovely garden with some gross old lino in it! Despite Dusband's gentle guidance of 'It'll be really tough to get up', I picked up my hoe and battled with the lino! I sliced through the air like some ninja warrior, thrusting it deep underneath then prising the lino with all of my might! Ok, so all my might isn't that much, but hey, I put my weight into it!
Eventually it did come up, but left behind it some yukky yellow bubble gum type substance which even after many many years obviously hadn't set!

Underneath said lino was a plinth of solid concrete with the aforementioned toilet base shaped bit of concrete. It appears that the archaeologist in the family genes runs in me as well! If only it was a few gold coins instead....ah well never mind, we put a pot over it!

Today I was woken up by some banging and I was most indignant! Who could possibly be banging at this unsociable hour of...oh, wait, 9 o clock!
I called Dusband in from the office (he's a good boy and gets up earlier than me) and he said I wouldn't be complaining when I saw who and what was banging and being banged.

I rushed to the office window with undisguised glee and there, my real life dreams manifested in one pot bellied slightly dusty man banging a fence together!
So now I'll have to go and take a photo of the garden with the lovely privacy that having a well over 6ft fence can bring! In fairness though the fence could be 5 1/2ft and it's still seem to be well over 6ft to me, but let me revel in my fantasy for now!

Mum's coming to visit at the end of August and I'm really looking forward to showing her what we've grown despite the fact that most things seem to be being eaten away by caterpillars! I've never known so many caterpillars in one concentrated area!
*shakes head*

Anyway, so the news is that the neighbours have gone, moved out and split up which is a shame. The landlord said it was because the boyfriend was always out til late leaving the girlfriend at home with the baby so I assume it stems from the late night door bell ringing. We've got new neighbours moving in next week so we'll be praying they're nice people and we'll get on well. They'll have a ton of junk to get rid of out of their back garden by the looks of things, but they might not be too fussed!

Happy, happy day!

Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.

We've become a 'middle aged' couple who go home to 'water the garden' before sitting down and relaxing for the evening! If you've read an earlier blog and seen that our tiny garden is beginning to get some much needed attention, then this won't have come as a shock to you, but if it does....then good job you're already sitting down!

So you leave our house via a PVC Windowed door and follow a small outdoor corridor where two steps take you up into our garden. The corridor and steps are concrete and slightly greeny/mouldyness needing hosing and stiff brushing to give them a good clean up! At the top of the stairs is our 'proper garden' which is about 6m x 6m and covered in the most ugly cheap gravel ever! The half straight in front of you has the fence between us and next door (on the right) missing, then a set of rickety steps up to the left hand side of the garden, which is about 1m off the ground.

The top half of the garden now has decking squares (that were laid to cover the dodgy concrete corridor) laid out to create a slightly more attractive patio area to sit on. There was an old rickety round garden table, 4 faded green plastic chairs and a slightly rickety low bench which is more attractive for being weathered!

With it being Dus' birthday yesterday and him gaining riches and treasure, we decided to spend some sovereigns on making our garden slightly more comfortable!

So...with all the junk (including a kitchen sink) piled in one place waiting for a trip to the local recycling centre (or a call to the local council depending on motivation) we set off with gay abandon to the local garden centre!

We found a nice sized garden centre where we expected to find somene's personal back garden and having loaded a trolley with 3 large bags of compost made our way to the till to pay....only to find that they only take cash. In the year 2010, a garden centre....where people buy things for pleasure and leisure.....don't take debit or credit cards!?!

We discovered this fact whilst waiting for the till attendant to finish her gossip with the lady with the pram at the til as Dus noticed a sign saying such. On our way out of the shop area with our little perplexed faces we saw a man wearing the garden centre uniform and tried to tell him that we'd have to go to a cash point and come back and he nicely grunted at us and carried on walking. So we left our trolley where we'd left it outside the shop and made our way to our local hardware chain store.

We found a much better deal on the compost 300 litres for less than £20, but once again, no nice tubs for a reasonable price. However....on my shopping trip to buy Dus' wooden T rex kit for his birthday I had seen some lovely tubs in Wilkinson, so we decided to drop the compost home and walk into town to investigate Wilko's range. We were not dissappointed! We bought 4 x 70cm long 30cm wide tubs, 2 x round tubs (can't even guess at the diameter) and 1 x square tub and an indoor propagator and some shexy gardening gloves (his and hers). Oh and a dibber...which Dus has renamed a 'death stick'.

When we got home we cracked open a can of coke (me) and a bottle of beer (him) and set to work in the garden!
We used some of the ugly gravel to line the bottoms of the tubs, then filled them with our luscious (imbued with 4 weeks of food) compost and hefted them into place along the edges of the decking on the upper patio area.

We carefully dibbed our holes to sow our seeds into, popped the little beauties in and covered them over having ensured we marked each tub with a little white stick to denote what each tub contained. So now....in our lovely half finished garden with only 3 barriers...we have some lovely neat pots of compost. Great. Hopefully the packets told the truth and it will only be til June that we're waiting for some flowers!

We've planted marigolds into the first long tubs, then Sweet Peas into the pots to cover the back wall of the bathroom, which will need some trellis adding to grow them up at some point. Some sunflowers into one of the long tubs along the left side fence and a weird tree cutting into the square tub in the centre of the left back fence. Then we have one last long pot that is empty and needs something, but we're tempted to buy some plug and grow plants so that we have some instant colour!

Having completed all of this, we had 3 empty compost sacks and 2.5 still filled compost sacks. We want to remove the gravel from the lower part of the garden so that we can reveal the dainty old fashioned brick path and soil border that we know are buried underneath, so we decided to keep the empty compost sacks to do this and left them by the side of the full sacks in our garden.

Today, we've come home from our day out and went outside to 'water the garden' (hmm) and discovered 2.5 sacks of filled compost sacks....but no empty sacks.
However.....there was one half filled compost sack of the same variety in next doors garden, where they'd also been doing some work and had dug into their compost to implant some wooden stakes to put in a low fence.

I couldn't believe the cheek of it! Not only did they remove the fence so knew there was meant to be a fence between their garden and ours, but they've now crossed the invisible border to steal something from our garden! Ok, so it may have appeared that they were stealing rubbish, they were not to know that we wanted to re use the sacks....but pardon me for thinking that's totally not the point! If we'd come home and found them even in our garden I'd have felt violated enough, let alone that they've actually taken something out of our garden!

So I popped a note through their door saying 'Hi there, we noticed you've borrowed 3 of our empty compost sacks from the garden. Can you please pop them back to us when you're finished so that we can use them to save the gravel for our landlord. Thanks! Samantha and Dus from no 23' and I drew a smiley face on the bottom.

I doubt they still have the sacks, I would assume that they've taken them to the tip by now filled with the rubble that they've created in their garden.....but now because of them, we have to go out and buy some proper rubble sacks which we wouldn't have had to before. I also didn't want to get into a row with them, as let's face it, we have to live next to them until either we move or they do.

Anyway, with the saga of the compost sacks out of the way, I can't wait for the seeds to start sprouting! We've planted them, we've watered them, we've given them nutritious compost and sunlight, I don't know that we can do anything else and the excitement is almost too much!

We've got a few visitors planned for June, and we would love to have something to sit out in and enjoy when they come to visit aside from the smug pride aspect! I've never had a garden to be proud of, so I expect there'll be more news about the garden...so please bear with me! The great investigation into the Hussey Green Fingers begins!