{"id":1401,"date":"2009-03-30T05:28:23","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T05:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1401"},"modified":"2009-03-30T05:28:23","modified_gmt":"2009-03-30T05:28:23","slug":"water-butts-and-garden-reconstruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/03\/water-butts-and-garden-reconstruction\/","title":{"rendered":"Water Butts and Garden Reconstruction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I feel as though I&#8217;ve had a fairly productive weekend here. There was enough wind for windsurfing on Saturday, but my chest was still a little sore so I started the day by installing our two new water butts instead. All went to plan and the fact that it was raining whilst I installed them meant that I got to test them at the same time! Water butts online and from the shops seemed to cost somewhere in the region of \u00a350 each, but we managed to get some from the council for \u00a315. We then had to buy stands and rain diverters separately but it still worked out a lot cheaper.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve always been pretty good at not using much water here, mainly because we had no drains and so had to be careful. Until recently we had to siphon water out of the bath so tended to use that on the garden! The new water butts should mean we now use even less water in the garden. Our eco-friendliness continues, maybe I should redo our <a title=\"How eco-friendly are you?\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/a-co2-diet-saving-money-by-cutting-your-co2-emissions\/\">Act on CO2 test<\/a> now that we have water butts!<\/p>\n<p>Talking of the garden, it is in quite a state at the moment. It was looking really nice last year, but various bits of work and some large mechanical diggers put and end to that over the winter so we are back to square one and now have a huge patch of sand that needs turning into a garden once again. We&#8217;ve made a start my raking and seeding it with grass seed. The Pergola has been restored to its rightful place (although it is now even more &#8216;rustic&#8217; than it was). We do still have some plants here and there, so Saturday afternoon was spent moving the giant pampas grass a few feet tot the south to make room for a few other plants. This was harder work than expected so I was glad Harvey turned up and lent a hand.<\/p>\n<p>My chest seemed to be OK despite this exertion so I treated myself to a bike ride on Sunday Morning. I then spent the rest of Sunday cleaning my bike and doing more work in the garden. Weeding, sorting out the compost bins, putting up bird boxes, there&#8217;s just so much to do. It was however a gorgeous day, so where better to be than pottering in the garden?<\/p>\n<p>It still looks a mess, but at least the bits that weren&#8217;t completely destroyed are just about under control, and once the grass starts growing we have a plan for the rest of garden that doesn&#8217;t look too daunting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I feel as though I&#8217;ve had a fairly productive weekend here. There was enough wind for windsurfing on Saturday, but my chest was still a little sore so I started the day by installing our two new water butts instead. All went to plan and the fact that it was raining whilst I installed them&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1312,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gardening"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Water Butts and Garden Reconstruction - A Simple Life of Luxury<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/03\/water-butts-and-garden-reconstruction\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Water Butts and Garden Reconstruction - A Simple Life of Luxury\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I feel as though I&#8217;ve had a fairly productive weekend here. There was enough wind for windsurfing on Saturday, but my chest was still a little sore so I started the day by installing our two new water butts instead. 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