From muddy slope to bright green teletubby land

The grass is down and the railway sleepers have been made into retaining walls and flower beds. It is becoming a garden now. Had been waiting till it stopped raining to take photos of grass but it ain't stopped for two weeks. It's also obvious I have forgotten my day job as I'm sure last post should have read "Sneaky Peek" - got my mountains and eye movements confused.

Progress on the muddy slope

This week the sinuous railway sleeper wall is beginning to appear. Lens Guy is still painting railway sleepers spruce green and at some point this summer I may be able to plant some pot bound plants like the poppy.

Cautionary tale - don't garden in fit flops or you will regret it...

As it was another sunny day I rushed home from work donned shorts, t shirt and fit flops and headed into garden (muddy slope) to tackle more digging and weeding. Ironic isn't it? We don't have proper flower beds or anything but we do have a plethora of weeds. Lens Guy was at front of house,  water and rot proofing 30 metres of railway sleepers ( new not old) so I decided to tackle some of the weeds. I was most impressed with my efforts and was attacking the rock hard ground (what you get when it doesn't rain and your garden is made up of clay and large sandstone rocks and builder's rubble) with enthusiasm and a garden fork. Disaster struck - quite literally. I dug into my big toe with the fork, accidentally, of course. At first I was so shocked I couldn't believe it and then as I looked down at the gushing red blood I realised I had speared my big toe with the fork. I shouted for Lens Guy but as he was at front of house with some loud metal music blasting out he was oblivious to my feeble cries. I hobbled to back door and found roll of kitchen roll which I liberally applied to toe trying not to bleed too much on floor. Needless to say Lens Guy came to rescue and here I am, several hours later, sitting with toe up, heavily bandaged and in quite a lot of pain. Had plans to go to crop tomorrow but as in pain, and can't get shoes on over bandage, will be at home. I feel I should be starring in some "Tom and Jerry" style cartoon as the whole incident was totally stupid and the toe bandage is like an over the top cartoon bandage and I can almost visualise the throbbing pain symbols. I don't think I should be allowed near pointy sharp tools without the correct footwear. I really am pretty rubbish at all this stuff - it took me about two hours on Thursday to bang 20 panel pins into the wooden fence. I was such a girl - missing the nail, tapping and swinging wildly. I did do it though and then I tied bits of green strings to nails and hopefully my woefully small supermarket cheapo climber plants will do the business. I did manage to plant some Iris and Lilies that I have nurtured from bulbs and tiny plugs into garden today prior to spearing incident and I also put in some sunflowers and sweet peas I grew from seeds. I will take pics tomorrow as my hobbling meant I couldn't make it to top of slope to take pics.

Pots of colour to go in muddy slope

Not a lot of progress on the slope front. It was so hot this week end and we wanted to enjoy the garden so put down a green plastic grass to sit on...

Lots of flowers waiting to go.

Muddy Slope progress

Brother in law began work with the digger this week. I was going to blog this earlier but we had a disaster earlier in week when we found out original plans were way too expensive and I was well cheesed off. But... new plan involving circles, terraces like rice paddy fields and walls made of railway sleepers now under way. Looking at the muddy piles it is hard to imagine. No work next week as Brother in law putting in a bathroom for someone but the next week we might see some progress. Meanwhile I pick up cheap plants on offer whenever I see them and look for cuttings etc.

Marking out the muddy slope

Progress on the garden front. We have now become very technical and marked out the different features of our garden. If you close your eyes and imagine it is flat you get the idea. The digger is coming this week so Lens Guy and brother in law can get all macho and manly and be at one with the mud and the digger. We have even found a bricky who can start to build the walls to hold back the earth. I can even imagine some of the plants really planted rather than growing in pots sunk into ground to stop them blowing away.

Clumping around in the mud

Having spent the week trying to decide whether I should be marching and demonstrating against education cuts or going to a crop today... I did not manage either. Last night I was exhausted and decided I could not manage either. I felt a little less tired this afternoon so Lens Guy and I decided we could no longer put off measuring the garden. As we have moved to a brand new house our garden consists of a muddy slope.We can't afford to "get it done" so it will be a diy job with help from friends and family. After converting the site plan from 1:1000 to a 1:50 scale plan inside we trudged outside to measure up. Each step on soil meant my wellies squelching and sinking down and then I needed to tug them out of the soil to make next step. We were trying to calculate the gradient and slop which ended up with us using a piece of string, a bamboo cane and some pretty accurate guesstimating once a measurement was taken. It seems to slop 80 cm up one way but also 20 cm another way - which means if we want any flat bits we will need to excavae the mud and build some kind of terraces.