Treat this as a "before" photo

Once the new patio is finished, there will be just two corners of the garden (both around the "side", or north) which will need major sorting out to be at least acceptable. One is the ponding bit (not sure yet what to do about that). The other is this area by the front gate. And of course the front gate itself looks pretty bloody scruffy, so that (and the back gate) will need replacing soon. However, there are other things I need to spend money on more urgently than that, such as the soffits and fascia boards....that's my next project.

Anyway, I photographed the area by the gate as this is one of the areas of greatest transformation as a consequence of the patio works. This was just a scrubby, muddy area of "path", and every time it rained water gathered just inside the gate. So this is, as far as I am concerned, a dramatic change and improvement, and in that sense this is also an "after" photo, as well as a "before" photo. Having the path sorted out like this will also make it possible for us to do some DIY works on this area, using some of the remaining stones, and possibly a sleeper or two, to create some sort of raised bed or rockery for tough, shade loving alpines. But first we will need to dig out the stones here, and see what we have underneath. There are also at least three tree stumps in this area, the largest of which is intertwined with the wall, so we are not touching that because I don't want the wall coming down. The forsythia, to the far left of the picture, can probably be dug out. The others (can't remember what it was...) may just be cut back to below ground level. They are dead so we can just leave them.

Of course, we haven't by any means finished the back garden either, but we are probably not going to do too much more to that apart from a dedicated strawberry bed for next year, until we have a shed in place there. It's a multi year project, and lots of fun, of course.

Once the front patio is definitively finished, we will do some work to "dress" it, not just bringing back the things we took out, but also looking into some more pot gardening. After all, it was "pot" (balcony) gardening which got me into this lark in the first place, so I'll just be returning to my original interest.

In the extras is my picture of the end of Day Eleven, which in a way looks worse than Day Ten, because the slabs are covered in a fine black dust from the grouting used (which has to "cure" on its own...fingers crossed). I did, however, manage to water the front garden, which washed some of the dust off the plants from the piles of self-setting cement that were brushed in between the slabs, whilst providing sustenance to the thirsty plants. I thought this photo was a good one to use in the extras because it shows the lovely neat sleepers we now have retaining that bed, rather than the concrete slabs adorned with piles of stones. Weeds have gone bonkers, of course, during the three weeks the works have been ongoing, so there is also a lot of micro work to be done there.

Other than that, I spent most of the day on some School related matters, and I also allowed my laptop to upgrade the OS, which took about two hours.... I also went to yoga at tea time, and felt much better for it.

Not an entry for the photographic interest, so much as just a "journal" for me, now and in the future.