Can you dig it

After a couple of days spent liberally applying weedkiller we began to tug out the dead stuff today. This is the first part of the garden to begin to look respectable.

It is the area backing onto the utility room/ porch and under the kitchen window. I plan to make a herb garden.

The bench has been liberated from another part of the garden and it is in quite a bad way. Put it this way, I would not dare to sit upon it. It was clearly originally cheap and flimsy and is now repaired in Heath Robinson fashion... weak and wobbly, a lot like myself.

I will rub it down and paint it either white or a jolly colour and place my herb pots upon it so that I don't have to bend to pick them. We may need to do a better job of bracing the joints... but I do hate waste.

Sadly, there is evidence that suggests that under the weeds there was a planting of Alpine Strawberries. All but one plant bit the dust but I will try to keep the last one alive to propagate from. Mr L now knows what they look like and probably won't do it again.

Elsewhere in the garden things are looking rougher but incremental progress is being made.

Tomorrow we go to Montmorillon to buy a socket set so that Vincent can be repaired. In the afternoon we are going to see a car and to look at some furniture that may be for sale. Both belong to a couple who are selling up to return to the UK.

On Tuesday the new washing machine arrives. I shall probably spend all day doing the laundry but I am really looking forward to having the wardrobe full of clean clothes at long last.