Garden heaven

Where to start?! We have a lawn! We have a garden (other than a parking lot for weeds I mean)… it’s all very, very exciting!
We picked the hottest weekend of the year so far to clear the garden and lay turf. I sweated off half my body weight (fear not, I put it all straight back on with beer, cheese sandwiches and chocolate biscuits) and used muscles that only now after 32 years was I being introduced to. It took a day and a bit to get two thirds of the garden cleared. Some of the weeds were up to my shoulder (I’m 5’10). Don’t be fooled by the previous photo I included on the blog; that was several months ago! We still have to level off the back of the garden, which is where we will put the composter and wormery and maybe even a small shed – very small. And there is a strip of ground on the other side of the path that needs to be de-weeded and re-planted with lupins, honeysuckle, sweet peas, sunflowers, lavender, poppies and other such delights!
The lawn looks fantastic though and perhaps even better for having been laid by our own labour. After each day we had dirt on our dirt and our bath water was brown! But we loved it and had, believe it or not, a lot of fun. Sunday night we had dinner in the garden and surveyed our little kingdom with a great deal of satisfaction.
The dog loves the lawn! He loves lying on it, rolling on it, chasing bees on it, chewing toys on it and sunbathing on it. He seems to have no interest in chewing, clawing or digging at it but watch this space… for now he just appreciates (from an aesthetic point of view I’m sure) the improvements.
I also laid some fresh red-chip bark for the concrete area to the side of the house, and cleaned the bar-b-q!
Unfortunately the house has been a little neglected and is a COMPLETE mess, but it’s not bothering us too much at the moment, we’re just enjoying what we’ve achieved and then we’ll tackle the cleaning!