Sticks and stones

It's been quite a while since our last post (apologies to our faithful readers), but on the face of it things haven't changed much.  Which is odd, as we've been out in the garden just about all day every day (apart from our week's holiday) since then.  And it's mostly been heavy lifting and digging.   Every day the lawn gets a degree more green as the grass germinates and grows - although every day I take a load more stones and rocks off the surface...  There are a lot of sticks where there weren't sticks before - this is the birch copse....  

<<this is the hazel grove... and here are the beech columns:

Then there has been a huge amount of earth moving to complete the vegetable beds - edging completed, with peas, spinach, garlic, spuds, and salad various to date, more stuff to be sown and planted in the next few days.  The kitchen garden is about to gain some of the horse manure (in sacks) I've just started shifting in from one of my three muck sources! (The stud offer straw or shavings based manure, while Carol across the road offers grass-based product...)  Levelling the paths between the beds is back-breaking work and is progressing slowly, the aim being to get a surface down that we can pave with the reclaimed patio and driveway paviours.

Meanwhile Alan has been laying out the space for the greenhouse, which is on quite a slope and will therefore require quite a bit more heavy lifting.  If anyone reading this fancies shifting some flinty mud, you're very welcome to visit....
There's a huge number of things in pots in the area on the stableyard where the compost heaps are going to be.  They need to be planted out before I can make the compost areas.  But I can't plant them until I have flowerbeds to put them into.  The bed next to the pond needs a retaining wall before it can be planted, and that needed a fair bit of excavation as well as adjustment to the roughly-dug-out pond area.  I completed the retaining wall foundation yesterday and bought the sleepers to make the wall - here it is now in situ, just back-filling to do.

Indoors, Alan has pretty much wrestled the garage into a tidy state, although we don't yet have the shadowboards up, and yesterday Tim the Logburner fitted the additional insulation round the flue which is part of the condensation-prevention measures.  ...Now, back to work.....