Garden Reconstruction

Morgan was at home ill on Monday, he wasn’t too bad but he was recovering from a nasty bout of diarrhea and sickness on Sunday, so I was housebound too. I did a fair bit of work first thing, then did an hour on the turbo trainer with some VO2max intervals courtesy of ‘Shortoff +1’ from TrainerRoad.

Shortoff+1

Shortoff+1

Hard work, but good. I then blitzed the house, giving it a good clean, polish and vacuum whilst doing several loads of washing and hanging it out in our super-drying-conservatory. When the sun is shining in the morning washing dries in no time out there. After lunch it was time for some garden reconstruction.

Garden Reconstruction

We want to build a lean-to shelter behind the house to store our canoe under so that means clearing out behind the house. I removed the raised bed on Sunday and re-purposed the wood to build a larger raised bed in the back garden. Today I started moving soil from behind the house and filling up the new raised bed with it. First I had to dig up the turf that was at the base of the raised bed and turn it over. This was competed faster than I expected thanks to the fact that I was chatting to Ted over the fence at the same time. I then started moving barrow loads of soil from behind the house. I also moved what felt like hundreds of bags of compost from behind the house and put them in the raised bed too. Despite the amount of soil and compost that I moved it didn’t make a massive impression in the raised bed. There’s still some more to go though and it’ll give me a good excuse to dig out the compost bins soon too as I need to fill it up a little more than it is so far.

The garden reconstruction was hard work but I guess it was exercise and at the same time I was not only clearing out behind the house ready for the construction of a new lean-to but I was creating a new raised bed for veggies as well. Three things at once. It wasn’t all hard work though as I did manage a bit of down-time to drink a cup of tea in the garden and admire the flowers.

Bees on the Increase

I also stopped the garden reconstruction to do a bee inspection as well and I’m pleased to say that the bees were doing well. Loads of new eggs and quite a bit of brood so they will be increasing in numbers very soon. There were already quite a few bees in there and they were covering at least 8 frames in the brood box and have some honey in the super too. I think we need to be vigilant and look out for signs of swarming. Maybe we should just split them to preempt any swarming? It would be nice to make increase from these as they are such nice bees.

It’s good to feel as though we’re making progress in the garden, but there’s always so much to do.

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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