* level out the floor under the Holzleg
* lay out a drainage sink with the remaining bricks
* gather up all the brick, concrete and terracotta rubble lying about the garden and dump it there
* saw up lengths of ex-fence posts and panels for a Holzleg floor
* lay the Holzleg floor
* paint two of the donated garden chairs -- meant for burning but I thought 2 of them were still fine and much more comfortable than our metal ones -- one is now in mango and the other in tuscan olive
* cut the patio jasmine
* barrow all the maple stumps from the driveway halfway down the garden to try splitting them (didn't work -- too many knots in the wood -- and the neighbours had people round on their patio and I felt self-conscious making such a noise with my mallet and my wood grenade so we gave up in the end)
* clear the Victorian claw bath so that we can move it down the garden later
* paint boards in different background colours and photograph some of our plants for cards
* water everything in the garden and out front
* go to the allotment and water everything there.
On the allotment, we were visited by a newbie, a bloke, a bit younger than us maybe, who was keen for inspiration and to see what we were doing on our plot. We'd just harvested more sweet williams for the vase, some new potatoes and a punnet full of fresh strawberries, and he was very complimentary about the range and variety of what we were growing. We exchanged tips and tricks -- he was quite keen on our plastic-piping-with-debris-netting solution because he didn't like the way the pigeons ate everything on his plot. Then he said something about how taking on this plot had made him lose two stones in weight just from working it two, three hours each evening. Respect, I thought. I don't lose weight from gardening -- I put it on in muscle around my shoulders and arms, which are rather less Michelle Obama now and more Arnold Schwarzenegger, and mainly from lugging 20 kg of water each way up and down the path from the river about 4-5 times a night.
It's funny though how we've graduated from Newbie to sort-of Established in three years. I for one still feel like a newbie, blindly groping my way towards harvest success. I still don't know the name of all of the weeds in our garden and in 3 years I've not managed to set up a fruit cage so each year, we end up without red currants. The only reason we had any was because of the currant shrubs in our garden and with us deliberately attracting so many birds into it, we can now kiss goodbye to these as well.
Not a massive problem though -- there's always foraging. Yesterday, OH and I went for a drive -- I wanted to check out how the mushrooms were doing (they're not doing anything -- it's too dry for them) and we also wanted to collect lots of elderflowers for our various brewing, cordial-making and baking projects. So we ended up in our usual foraging spot, filled our bags with elderflower and then went further down the path until we got to an incredibly cute little three-house settlement next to a nature reserve. I massively envied those who lived there -- how brilliant is that? Alright, the path, which is obviously privately maintained, is in an abominable state but perhaps that's intentional, to scare off any unwanted visitors. OH, who had checked out the nature reserve before, showed me a little plantation on common land with mature mirabelle trees that were absolutely heaving with green fruit. In late summer, early autumn, these will be FULL of plums. I went down a side path and discovered more trees, apples or crab apples by the looks of it, also with lots of promising fruit. These will all go on our foraging map.
Back to our patio dinner today. OH barbecued some pork that he'd marinated in a teriyaki sauce. The red wine is a Blueberry Dancer, home-made. The sweet williams in the vase are from the plot as is the lettuce in the bowl at the back and the parsley on the little plate in the middle next to the bottle. The salad also had plenty of rocket/rucola -- gathered from between the pavement cracks round our house where it grows wild. There's a bowl of freshly boiled new potatoes, the first of the year, about to be placed on the table. And not yet in the picture but waiting in the wings: a huge bowl of strawberries for dessert. Don't need much more in summer.
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