I have finished the wretched digging.
The front garden is entirely dug over, and not a single weed remains, except for the ones I have missed, I imagine there will be quite a few of those.
I have shovelled the soil and scraped it more or less flat, so that we can lay flag stones. Mark says he is going to make them look like a compass, and got his telephone out to see the exact direction of North, which it showed completely inaccurately, telling us with all the confident assurance of AI that North was somewhere in the Library Gardens, which it absolutely isn’t. We know where North is in relation to our house. It is up near the old Nat West, which incidentally has closed now. I am cross about this even though I never went there because of it being up a steep hill, so I did all my banking at the Post Office. We do not have any banks in Windermere any more, and once we had lots of them, the world is going to hell in a handcart I can tell you.
Anyway the telephone could not find North at all, so we will have to hunt out a proper compass. We have got several of these left over from Oliver’s days at a determinedly outward bound sort of school, probably I will remember what I have done with one of them in the end. Either that or we will just have to point the flagstone compass in more or less the right direction and possibly be a degree or two out, but since we are unlikely to need to find due North from the middle of our garden I don’t suppose it will matter, especially since we already know where the Nat West is and it is up a hill in any case.
Mark built the arches over the gate whilst I was digging. These have been constructed out of an old trampoline, and I am going to make them look like trees. I am looking forward to this bit but it will have to wait until it stops raining, this heatwave that I keep reading about sounds like fake news to me. I have taken off my thermal vest but that hardly qualifies in my opinion, most certainly I do not need to tune in to the BBC to be advised to stay indoors and make sure all old people get their water in a glass instead of in the usual hot water bottle on their toes.
It has actually rained for most of the day today, and just for your information, I have been obliged to light the fire. The house was damp and chilly, so if you are one of those people in the south grumbling about your ice cream melting too quickly I suggest you book yourself a mini-break in the Lake District, that will cure you.
We got wet today. Few things are more disheartening than digging through sodden soil in the rain, but it is done, and I have dried off, and all is well once again. I have planted our new plants, and also replanted several of our old plants, and the garden is looking optimistically gardeny. I did not take a picture but I will take one in the next few days, and you will be able to see how exciting it is all becoming. It is going to be the garden of a retired pirate. I have found a Jolly Roger on eBay and Mark is building the flagpole. We think that we will have a fire pit in the middle so that we can sit around it and drink rum and scandalise the neighbours.
I like that idea.
Despite the excitingness of it all, I have got to desist for the next few days. Tomorrow is going to be fully occupied with preparations for our trip across to York. We have been instructed to bring a picnic, so I hope that York is further into the heatwave than we are.
It is not as exciting as building a flagpole in the garden, but it is going to be a splendid outing all the same.
