Make your self comfortable, get a cup of tea and prepare to be reading this for a while. I debated lots of smaller posts but decided to go for the whole week in one go.
Last post was devoted to the imminent arrival of all things Chicken, well that has continued all week, but still, at the moment we are chicken-less, but not through lack of trying, its seems its the wrong time of year to buy chickens. Oh well we are promised some next week so cross everything.
Although we don't have the chickens they do have a rather swanky new home waiting for them. www.chickencoopsdirect.com delivered as promised and once again we had a building in boxes. This time on a much smaller scale.
A quick inspection and glance at the very small instruction leaflet and we were off. The bits all needed wood preservative before being put together so painting was the first order of the day.
My job was to mark out where the new house was to go so off to the end of the garden with a ball of string and tape measure. It didn't take long and the spot was marked.
While I was at it I decided to mark out some of my raised beds and the borders of the paths.
Meanwhile the painting was going well and bits were starting to appear in the garden.
Before long it was looking great.
The final bit of construction was the double run, then to make it fox and vermin proof.
Job Done. You will see from the mud we have had quite a bit of rain this week but that hasn't put us off, or the trades that have been here as well.
Electricity in the Garden and lights have been high on the list for a while and this week Mike the sparky has got a lot of it done. I had no Idea that armoured cable was so expensive. apparently its a favourite item for theft as it has so much metal in it! anyway we now have a lot of it running around the outside of our garden and the shed and summerhouse already have power, with the garden lights to follow next week.
Meanwhile back in the garden, we need to put a border around the edge of the allotment to hold the gravel paths I am planning to install. So wood was required. Some time ago we acquired a load of pallets for nothing from Wickes at Christchurch. They have been stacked just waiting for there chance to get involved. Now was the time.
Armed with a jemmy and club hammer I have spent the past two days breaking the pallets up and removing all the nails. my arms are knackered today, so much so that we are going to have a garden free day today and do something else! it took hours but I think I am going to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger by the time I have finished this particular job!
At some point, I can't remember when ( it may have been tuesday) we went out for a bit and I decided to go to the garden centre and buy some seed. So armed with my list we headed for Stewarts at Christchurch. I Spent a happy 45 minutes in the seed section sorting out what to grow. Jim got bored and wandered off but I emerged with an enormous pile of packets. If I manage to grow all this we will be feeding the whole street for most of the year!
The Fence was still laying sadly in the stream, we were expecting the chaps from Ashley Tree Surgeons on Monday to fix it, but Friday morning a phone call brought good news, they had finished the previous job early, Could they start today? Well of course they could and so 30 minutes later another lorry was unloading outside.
It didn't take them long to cut up the old fence using chainsaws and then we could finally see the stream properly.
It looked really nice with the fence down and the stream running alongside the patio, sadly the neighbours on the other side don't have wooden fences and seem to have dumped all there garden waste over their boundaries. If only they had higher fences,I would have been tempted to tell the fencers not to bother putting one back up. So after a bit of discussion with Jim they started putting in the concrete posts.
This time, instead of 8 foot wooden posts dug into a soggy river bank, we have 9 foot concrete posts that have been concreted in. Hopefully this one won't be coming down anytime soon.
I mentioned marking out my raised beds earlier. We have decided after a lot of research to use scaffold boards to make the beds. They seem to be the material of choice for most vegetable gardeners so as I am one to try and follow fashion.. Scaffold boards for me too.
Of course I had no idea how heavy they are, we found lots of places online that had them but all wanted more money than the boards cost to deliver them. Finally after much searching we located a reclamation yard reasonably locally who could assist. http://www.romseyreclamation.com/ will be delivering me 32 scaffold boards next week and we can get them set up pretty quickly.
So thats about it for now, lots of other little bits and pieces done but a bit dull to put in here. today is a day off from the garden. Its inside jobs today, cleaning and cooking are high on the list. Monday morning brings the completion of the fence and hopefully lights in the allotment and greenhouse.
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