Slow slow start to 2011

Lots of promise for 2011 but yet any to be lived out.  So far work in the garden has been little to nearly reaching none at all.   The Square Foot Garden beds have not been touched since last year and remain to be mainly used as a cat toilet (part of the reason why they are yet to be touched).   Before I do anything I need to made up some frames in order to stop the cat getting onto them, and I must do that fast otherwise time will have run out before I get to do anything.     The beds need tidying up, cat poo removed and new compost added on top.  I wonder if last year they got too water logged which is why we had limited success, maybe the mixture of peat and vermiculite was too much for it.  It seemed very dry on top but moist and warm when you put your finger in it, if it had been sunny for a number of days.  But as soon as it rained, certainly  near the end of the growing year, it remained very wet.    My plan then is to top up with compost only.

The decking needs a good clean. not helped by the leaking toilet overflow which has been dripping onto the decking for nearly a year now.   It’s on my list to fix, it really is, but for now it means a rather green and wet section of decking.

You may spot the wood down one side of the garden, there is a story behind that…..   Our new open fireplace is going well and over winter I had managed to pick up some free wood which I cut up and we used.  This was coming to an end when another source suggested they had some waste wood from building sites that if I wanted they would leave on the driveway.  Bingo, I thought.    The large Ford Transit arrived early one Saturday morning and they unloaded and kept unloading.  The van was completly full of wood that had been used with concreting, big thick long lengths, all on our driveway.   The bloke told me he would leave it a month or two before he comes next as it would take some time to burn it all.  A slight understatement, I think we have wood here for 6 months or so!

For the past two or three weekends I have been slowly cutting up the wood and we have done very well for free wood, free heating in the evenings.   The wood is good stuff though, big thick bits of it.  What you see in the photos here then is just a small amount of it (the rest is already cut up and round the side), and trying out various garden project ideas before the rest is either put to good garden use or cut up too for burning.  Watch this space….

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