Thank you, family!

When I haven't been off gallivanting, I've been doing a bit of work in the garden each day. Job 1 is trying to break up the compacted clay that the building work created and brought to the surface. I thought I was going to have to get in lots of horse manure and mix it in but I've realised that if I let the clay dry (I cover it with plastic in the rain and expose it in the sun) I can pound it and mix the powder/small pieces with the good topsoil in my garden and with my own compost, and produce a fairly good plant bed. Job 2 is digging out soil/clay next to the fence and putting in bricks to protect the fence from damp soil The most I can do of these in one day before my hands tell me to stop is only four, so it's slow work.

Today my two lovely Borns came to help and at short notice my brother-who-can-do-everything also arrived to confirm my diagnosis that what tripped the fuseboard a few weeks ago was the cooker element. That took him ten minutes then he used an electronic metal-finder to locate the screws (hence the wooden studs) in a wall so I can fix a still-to-be-built wardrobe to it. Then he joined us in the garden.

I am astonished and thrilled that at the end of today the builder's yard looked like this. The under-fence bricks now go beyond the spirea shrub. There is more to do beyond there and where all those gorgeous flowers are on the left I want to do some concrete removal, weeding and ground levelling, but this is huge progress.