Pig Sty Avenue

That's wee Sparky in the photo, which I took whilst having a breather from tidying up the rediscovered path, and moving the pile of earth at the end of it. Soon afterwards, she cut her paw really quite badly, presumably on one of the plots innumerable shards of glass. Emergency visit to the vet. No stitches, but a couple of metal staples to keep the flap of her pad on. That was 10 days ago, though it feels much longer because a slightly disabled dog becomes incredibly tying, and none of us are getting as much exercise as we'd like. Cleo, too, cut her carpal pad a few weeks ago, though not entailing a visit to the vet. Long story short, I caught have my dogs getting injured like this, so they've been banished from the plot pending clearing of the glass. This project got a major boost this morning when I was able to delegate domestic & canine duties for a few hours. I remembered Dad using a large riddle when we had a big Edwardian back garden in Hampshire which ...

I mentioned to The Neighbour a couple of weeks ago the disgraceful nature of our mutual boundary, my former midden area, his greenhouse/potting shed. I only mentioned it because I'd have to go onto his allotment to get it clear and tidy, but, Gawd-bless-'im! he went ahead and tidied it all up and even put a nice new few fence in.You can see it there on the upper left of the photo. On the right is the increasingly big pile of rotten wood from the shed and the midden. I'm waiting for the rain to get it burnt. Also on the right is scrap iron and other rubbish for the skip. I'm blogging the rather tedious subject of a midden because I'm inordinately pleased to be getting this area cleaned up with a view to it being cultivable by the end of this growing season. The area in the middle of the photo is a thin layer of earth covering one or two courses of bricks, which themselves cover some very stony ground. The bricks I'll make into paths. The earth beneath is goin...

The Neighbour had worked until late into the gloaming on Wednesday, and dug out a lot of the midden area which adjoins our two plots. I spent some time tidying it into three piles: rubbish, scrap metal, and rotten wood for burning. I got down into the midden and found a double course of bricks, (handy, because I'm running out of bricks). I started to excavate them, when The Neighbour showed up to finish off his side, (rotten timber, bracken and brambles, he'd moved a lot of broken glass yesterday), so I went back to the path. Hard work, having to travel the length of the path to get rubble (broken bricks and bits of concrete from the midden-border), and by mid-afternoon I realised I wouldn't get finished by reason of the staggering rule, (when I start to stagger, it's time to leave). Only a couple of flags to go to reach the stub of brick path I did last summer at the Northern end. Couple of the flags I laid yesterday are a bit shoogly, and will need attention in due ...

Spent 4 hours yesterday, and still never finished that path. I've ran out of rubble from the frog's winter palace, (they'll stay hibernated until night time temperature is above 5C, apparently , which is good to know, I'm keeping on eye on the weather stats for that, but just now it's down to zero. So I'm mining rubble from the old greenhouse foundations. This is good, 2o jobs getting done at once, but slow. Good (whole) bricks from the foundations I keep for the path going south, where there was no path at all before. I'm laying that as I go. So that's 3 jobs at once, really. I keep broken bricks and bits of concrete for the path foundation. The SE boundary, next to my neighbour's greenhouse, and adjoining the old midden, is a bloody eyesore. I mentioned getting it tidied up to the neighbour yesterday, and he agreed we'd do it together this morning. I'm typing quickly to get away and get started now. The nights are cold because of the clea...