Working in the Garden

After a summer of pondering and planning, I finally ordered the wood and it turned up, it was all a bit too large (and expensive) to just leave in the garden while I pondered a bit more. I decided to edge the veg plot in the garden with railway sleepers, although of course these aren’t really railway sleepers but just oak wood cut to the size of a rather broad gauge track. They are solid and so should be fine.

The garden is on a hill which you don’t notice at all in any way until you measure things and then suddenly it seems on such a massive slope you are surprised that your coffee doesn’t spill all over the place when you place it on the ground. With careful measuring I worked out the difference between the highest and lowest part of the bed is just under 20cm which as if by magic is about the same as a (fake) railway sleeper. One end will be high up, the other end the sleeper will be mostly buried.

I decided to start with, what I was calling, the ‘main corner’ which turned out to be just the corner I decided to start with. It was also the corner that would have the two longest lengths (2.5 metres) meeting each other at the lowest point and making it’s way to the highest. Get this bit right and the rest will just fit, is the theory. I planned to only do this one bit today, due to time but also due slightly to vegetables still in the ground being in the way.

After digging the hole and compacting down the bottom of the whole length, I put these first two length in place. A small bit of adjustment but actually not too much. A compacted soil around the more buried bits and as soon as it was all in the place the cat had a walk along the top to try it out.

I’ve tried to measure it all out to keep sawing lengths to the minimum but the next lot will need it, which is why I left that for another day…

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