Still alive, with sunflowers

We have worked SO hard for the past few days! When I say we, I mean my sister Kate and I, and friend J yesterday. Starting on Saturday, when we began shifting garden furniture to make a potting area for Steve near the back door, we have moved furniture, and pots, and weeds, and more weeds, and cut down a tree and then chopped it small enough to fit into bin bags, and sorted the pots and the old soil, and filled the car, and been to the tip ( you have to book ahead in Gloucestershire, and only go once a day max) and swept, and slashed, and slept and smashed (a glass and a pot). Now we have a patio that is a few feet deeper (honestly) and a view from the top over the patio, and a potting station, and shelves, and a stack of compost sacks, and two more trips booked to two different tips. Definitely two more carloads of green waste, old wood and old pots.

We've had breakfast and lunch and supper and flapjacks and a game of Logo, and I haven't lain in the hammock once today! We did manage lunch outside. I wanted to light a fire in the firepit for Kate's last night, but rain and thunder stopped play.

Poor Kate thought she was coming on on holiday! We were supposed to be on a boat trip today, but it was cancelled last Thursday. She leaves tomorrow. How on earth will I keep up the good work without her? An hour a day of chopping back brambles and nettles: will it make any difference? I had managed around ten bags before she got here, but don't think that anyone could have noticed the difference, apart from CleanSteve. Now we've done do much that I can even hang up washing again without the line getting caught in one of Sleeping Beauty's hedges of thorns.

CleanSteve went up to the farm shop and bought some lettuce plugs to pot up, and these glorious sunflowers. He also drove up to the tip with me, and we had to go miles out of our way because so many roads were closed. We could not have taken Kate's car because she'd just had it valeted. That was our morning treat; shopping in town while the car was being done, and drinking takeaway coffee in the sunshine in the Old Convent car park.