Having ordered far too much turf (11 rolls too many to be precise!) and failing to flog them on Cheapcycle, we decided to lay them on the other half of the garden.  Originally we hadnt planned on doing that side because it is the side that the dog uses and it would be ruined pretty much straight away anyway.  However, rather waste the turf we went ahead and after a day of digging, raking and laying this happened…

We also found a little bird’s nest in amongst our ivy, its not really hidden away either and probably in the most noisy part of the garden, right by the very squeaky gate!  This morning, I noticed a blackbird fly out of the ivy and sure enough, in the nest was a Momma blackbird!  I didnt like to disturb her too much, although Joe was very keen to keep his eyes firmly on the nest.  Now I need to find somewhere suitable to hang some worms and blackbird food for them to enjoy without the risk of our fat cat catching them!

It’s a bit difficult to see but the nest is in the middle of the photograph. I will try to get a better photo but I really dont want to disturb the nest.

We’ve lived in our house for a little over 6 years now and really haven’t kept the lawn that was there in any particular shape, other than mowing it, combined with having a female dog equals a very patchy and hard lawn!  Now that Joe is coming up to 3 (already?!), he wants to be out in the garden more and last year, I hated that we couldn’t go out barefoot because of the stones in the baldy lawn, when we had the pool out it was just muddy and horrible so this year I was determined to get it sorted.

The plan; remove one side of the garden grass, the cobbled border, dig up the ornamental grasses and the 4 year old phormium and find a new home for them all.

Unfortunately I forgot to get a before photo!

Day 1:

We hired a turf cutter to take off the bumpy, baldy grass.  It was a big old machine and bloody heavy – I’m glad Chris took this job, then he dug over the soil, ready for raking.

Next, I raked over and seived the whole thing.  I thought my arms were going to drop off after all the sieving but well worth it because we had a huge amount of stones in the soil.

I also wanted to create a play area for Joe, he has a trampoline and so I wanted a specific area for that, also a little playhouse if he gets one and under our eucalyptus tree is a perfect place. Rather than turf that area, I wanted to put in play bark so I set about creating that little space before we put the top soil down and laid the turf.We were now ready to topsoil and turf, which we couldn’t do until it had arrived!

Day 2: Topsoil & Turf

We were woke with a phone call from the turf man at 8am saying he was on his way.  This was brilliant as the forecast for the day was not brilliant and we wanted to get it all down before the rain arrived. 30 minutes later the man in his pick up arrived, Joe was VERY excited especially when he lifted the back and tipped out the topsoil.
Trying to figure out where the lumps and dips were was a bit of a job in itself but with a lot of shuffling, top soil filling and more shuffling, I filled and shuffled as much as I could and Chris started to lay the turf.

After a lot of fetching and laying and fitting in, oh and a bit of keeping Joe off the newly laid turf the lawn was down! Wohoo!  Now to dash off the shop to grab a new hose and sprinkler!

Above is the final product.

Now all we have to do is keep the dog and Joe off it for a week or so.

Well its that time of the year again, where I get excited about all the things I can plant this year with Joe and that we can eat!  Last year, I dug a little veg plot, half of it was used for strawberries and the other for veg.

To be honest, I didn’t realise just how small a plot it was and this year have already bought far too many seeds to plant for my tiny plot.  So, I needed somewhere to move my strawberries to.  I cant get rid of them, Joe loves to eat them too much so I had a search around on the net but could only really come up with strawberry towers or cheap pop-up planters.  Neither of which suited me, one being far too expensive and the other not ideal to keep my strawberries in all year round.  I found a forum online where they were taking about making their own strawberry planter, out of 3 pots in varying sizes (largest at the bottom, getting smaller as they went up) and what a fab idea it was!  So of to Asda I went and bought some of their ‘on special’ plastic pots (Im ok with plasticotta!) and today the tumbling tower was made.

Chris very kindly, used his Dremmel to put a hole through the middle of each pot so I could slot them together with a bamboo cane for stability really.

I then built them and potted up the strawbs – so very, very easy!

Cant wait for the strawberries.

I stumpled across a few photos from last year that I thought I would share.

I have become a mosquito’s perfect dinner.  On Monday evening, I went out in the garden to brush the dog (can’t do it in the house because there’s far too much fur) and it must have taken no more than 2 minutes for me to feel a pinch on my shoulder.  As I checked to see what it was, I found the horrible little bugger with her stinger inserted into my shoulder like a straw in a juice carton; I say she because after reading on them (I’m getting to know my enemy) it seems that its the females that need a blood meal before she lays her eggs.  Anyway, I squished that one but soon enough I had another bite, then another until I’d had enough and my dog was considerably fluffier than before so went inside to try my best not scratch and smothered myself in Savlon.  I counted 5 on my arm, 4 on my back and 2 on my leg.  I react to bites, badly.  They swell, weep, itch and really ache and the last time I had a bite (which was a few years ago), I ended up going to the Minor Injuries Unit because it was so painful and swollen so I was not looking forward to having so many at once.  I took some anti-histamine which made me all drowsy but took the itching away.

On Tuesday, the bites had started to swell slightly but nothing too bad and they were very itchy so my friend at work zapped me with this ingenious little device that stops the swelling and itching.  It works but you really have to zap yourself silly for any prolonged relief.

Anyway, on Tuesday evening I had to go back into the garden to water the tomatoes and squash and got 3 more bites, then while sitting indoors a little nasty came and chewed on my foot (on the top) and on my neck!  So, I managed to survive all summer without a single bite and have become a feast in 2 days. Joy.  Now I have some very attractive weeping lumps on my legs, arms, back and neck and the swelling has started again.

I just cant stop scratching….