Pause Briefly for Breath

This is the view looking North, taken from the point where the new South end path begins to run alongside the shed. To the left foreground is the newly levelled SW bed. On the opposite side of the path is a heap of rotten wood and ground elder roots, waiting for a bonfire.

The left middle ground, with the white plastic chair, bucket (for quartz pebbles, mostly), and fishbox (for bits of broken glass) is the West side of the old greenhouse, and/or "concrete and brick structure". To the right of that is a pile of rubble, which lies over the East side of the old greenhouse, or whatever it is. The oil drum is on top of the rediscovered path. Beyond that is the tattie bed, and then the pond.

Finally, where the scene of the action will be in the next few weeks, beyond the white chair is the Midwest and North West beds, which I've begun to dig over, (working my way up from the North end, where there are transplanted fruit bushes).

The thing that keeps me opening this photo at odd hours of the day and evening since I took it yesterday is a detail which would go unnoticed if you hadn't spent many months working to bring it about, namely, the fact that the beds on the Mid- and Northwest side slope gently from West to East, towards the path. Formerly, the slope ran the other way, and there was a ditch along the boundary. It was very liable to waterlogging, and I considered giving up and planting a bog garden, briefly, last year. But it drains nicely now under the path, which conceals an 18in deep French drain, and into the pond.

I've started digging it over, to help knit the 57 varieties of soil together, and I'm laying a skinny path, one brick's width, around the boundary, between the hedge line and the beds, so I can get round with the barrow, rake and hoe for weeding and to attend to the hedge.

Voila. It's taken almost a year, but now it's beginning to look like an allotment. Today I carry on digging, and start planting neeps, marigolds and cabbages down at the North end.

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