Bridge saw

This bit of kit looks tamer than it is: a bridge saw that precision-cuts stone, tile and concrete. It's much too heavy and unwieldy for me to have been able to carry the end that M, the landscaper, wasn't carrying, so his wife came round to help this morning. They got it from the street, up the steps and through the front door, then past the pinch point in my hall with only a couple of millimetres to spare.

So far its water-cooled diamond blade has just been crunching the dried-up mortar on my reclaimed quarry tiles but on Thursday it'll be slicing its way through slate to create the odd angles that this 'draft' layout needs. Everything in the large quadrant nearest the camera in that photo was mortared in today. It's not straightforward because the concrete base slopes the wrong way so M is correcting the levels as he goes.

While he does the skilled work, I have been selecting the least damaged quarry tiles, washing algae off them, moving the slabs he needs nearer to his work area and heaving unwanted masonry up the garden and through the house so that Freeglers can relieve me of it. Gradually the garden is becoming free of junk, just as spring is attracting all sorts of unidentified greenery out of the newly uncovered earth. There are definitely at least daffodil and tulip shoots celebrating no longer being covered by pallets. It's heartening.