These boots were made for planting

Flowers are growing quite happily in our garden (so are the weeds, but that's another story) and the bumble bees are really loving the lavenders I've bought, which is lovely.

There's been something I've wanted to try for a while; putting flowers in boots. My mother-in-law, who (as the daughter of a gardener) has a lovely one in her garden that I've been quite envious of, so when I noticed that SBB had left a pair of his old work boots in the garden over the winter, I knew my chance had come. I casually asked him one day what he was planning on doing with them.
"Nothing," he answered, "I thought you'd like to plant something in them."
"Really?" I asked, delighted. "How could you tell?"
He smiled. "Because I know you."
It's true, he does, and the fact that he thought of me and purposely kept them for me is lovely.

We were in B&Q, looking at plants. I was looking for something that would be okay in the pot and I'd been looking for a few minutes before I remembered I know NOTHING about plants. Nothing. SBB suggested just talking to his mum and asking her advice. I agreed and then I saw them. Geraniums. We shared a look and identical smiles. You might be thinking that we're a bit crazy so at this point I'm going to mention that we're fans of The Dubliners. In order to get the reference (and the joke) check out Seven Drunken Nights, by The Dubliners.
It had to be done.

There's a Headcrab in my garden

I made an odd discovery in our garden recently and I'm not sure what it is but it reminds me uncomfortably of a Headcrab (from Half-Life) or the red and black thing that chases Chris Pine in Star Trek. If anyone has any clue what it is, please let me know - it'd be nice to know that an alien species isn't hatching in my garden.

Creepy, isn't it?

Butterflies have been abundant and I've been trying to snap pictures of them when I can.

We've also got a new blackbird in our garden. We already have one blackbird that lives in our hedge and makes a next every year - he's rather friendly and is perfectly happy to come and sit near our feet when we're digging anything up in the garden. I've named him Benji.
But when we were last out in the garden we noticed a different blackbird - it may be Benji's son, we're not sure. He looks a little raggedy (possibly due to still losing his baby feathers?) so I've called him Scrappy Toots.

He's quite friendly, though, and came all the way up to my foot but I didn't want to get my phone out to take a picture in case it scared him away.
 

SBB has cleared along the back hedge, creating a tunnel in the foliage which looks rather magical, I think.

 

Working in the garden

Well it turns out that God does indeed move in mysterious ways. In my last post I was feeling a little depressed about the state of things then, barely 48 hours later, I was struck down by a stomach bug that my sister-in-law thoughtfully brought down with her for our Bank Holiday family get-together. I lost about 9lbs in four days. I couldn't eat anything. It was awful and I'm not sure I've ever been so ill.
All I could think was how lucky it was that I wasn't pregnant and therefore didn't have to worry about anything other than being ill.
See? Mysterious ways.
SBB and I have been working in the garden. I had to tackle the front garden because, frankly, it was looking like someone had lost a game of Jumanji out there.
Then I turned my attention to the hedge bed which is currently edged with stone but I have plans to bed in some grey bricks that SBB rescued from being thrown in a skip. The webbing also has some weeds and brambles growing up through it so I'm going to replace that too.

SBB has been working in the back garden, putting a path in alongside the finished patio and digging out the garden path to our driveway which we've been working on (I'll post pictures later)

Happily, the sunshine and warm weather has brought out the flowers - and the bees!

Patio progress - part 3: The final push

SBB has been a real trooper, working on the patio, setting up jobs as part of his new business, constructing a new fence for the driveway, digging out the Mother of All Roots, digging a test hole to look at the foundations, breaking up a concrete path and pouring a new one... Like I said, a real trooper.

He's finished the patio and I'm absolutely thrilled with it.

Laying the slabs

Finished!

First steps on the (dry) patio

A couple of days after SBB had finished the patio we both got a bit of a bee in our bonnet about the state of the path (see huge ugly blue tarp etc in above photo) so we had a tidy up and it was like a huge weight was lifted off our shoulders. Then SBB decided to fill in the empty triangle with gravel. It's starting to feel a lot more finished now (just ignore the horrible red paint stains on the wall, I need to power-wash those off).

So, there it is. Did you see the flower pots? I went for some plain terracotta pots in the end. I didn't want to draw attention away from the feature wall (which is the real star of the show) plus, they were also two for £9. Bargain.

But.

Did you notice the deliberate mistake? You may remember that in my part 2 update I mentioned the pattern I was planning (lavender, forget-me-not, herb pot, forget-me-not, lavender). Slight problem with that, which I only realised when I put the plants in the four terracotta pots I'd bought. I have three forget-me-not plants - you can see the third one attempting to hide behind the loose stones on top of the wall. Oops. I may have to have a rethink.

Patio progress: Part 2

 

It's finished! We're calling it the 'rustic' look.

Just kidding.

After much discussion SBB and I discarded our idea to add a square and a motif as we previously planned. I've bowed entirely to SBB's expertise for the patio design. I think we're both still a bit gutted about our herringbone pattern idea we had way back in August last year. The problem that we have, now that won't be laying bricks, is that the square isn't the right size for whole patio slabs to sit neatly - we'll have to put in some cut ones. We had thought that the cobbles/motif would alleviate the problem but after much measuring SBB decided that, in fact, it would only make it worse.

We nipped down to B&Q and looked at what they had to offer and then browsed the internet to see if we could find any better, for cheaper. We couldn't so one afternoon we went back to B&Q and bought some slabs which, by a happy mistake with barcodes were cheaper than we'd thought.

Now that the patio is coming together my thoughts have started to turn towards plants and plant holders/pots.

We went to a nursery to pick out some plants - I think it's called Forest View but I call it Narnia because it just goes on and on. SBB laughed a little when I first told him about it but when we went to get the plants he said, "Ah, I completely see why you call it Narnia now"

(If you go there, let me know if you see what I mean!)

I'm thinking of four or five pots to go along the wall - an evergreen (the lavender), a colourful pot (the Forget-me-nots and something else) a herb pot, then a colourful pot and another evergreen. The problem is, I'm not sure which pots to get. SBB isn't keen on anything too stylised or modern so would prefer some nice terracotta pots but I'm worried that the area may be a little too 'orange'

It's not entirely clear in this photo but the slabs are a sort of creamy yellow, so with that in mind here are the options I've spotted so far:

Dunelm Mill

Dunelm Mill

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

So. Those are the choices. Any ideas?

Patio progress (and oh, WHAT progress)

Remember when I was dreaming of patios? Well SBB has made quite a bit of progress. In fact, he was a little shocked when I showed him the original post from August of last year - not for how it looked but because he thought he'd started work on it much earlier and in fact spent a couple of minutes telling me how my post was wrong. Erm...

Anyway, we've made quite a bit of progress (I say 'we' I mean 'he'). First up was to lay a concrete base. SBB did this at the end of August and destroyed a pair of trainers in the process of laying the first half (luckily he wore wellies the second time)

First steps on the patio!

Next was to build the wall to hide the ugly concrete path. It took us a couple of back-breaking weekends to source the stones and we added the ones we bought to the small stock that we had left over from the old rockery.

 Isn't it so pretty?

 SBB found a heart-shaped stone and set it in the centre. He's such a romantic :)

This was such a good find. It's an old fragment of gravestone that we found under an overgrown hedge. For a while we weren't sure what to do with it but as soon as we decided we were going to build a stone wall there was only one option.

So that was it for last year. The winter set in and building work ceased, waiting until for better weather. Now that's it's spring of course, SBB has a patio-shaped-bee in his bonnet however, there was a problem. We hadn't bought enough bricks to lay the entire patio and they had been discontinued. No herringbone for us, then.
We threw some ideas around and eventually decided upon a slab/cobble/motif combo.

SBB set out the brick border and then filled the cavity behind the wall with rubble before topping it with muck and smoothing it over.

We then grabbed a couple of bags of gravel (the wood's there to keep it from spilling onto the path).

We didn't use as much gravel as we thought so the rest will be going down in this awkward little corner - along with something else that I'm going to keep as a surprise!

So that's all so far. We managed to source some broken bricks so SBB will be laying those and then we'll have to shop for some slabs to go down!
I confess that this progress is starting to make me think of BBQs....