Good deeds, day two

Compost one day and manure the next. Fancy. Must be new years’ resolution time.

I’ve had a huge day.

The cabbage beds and the flower beds are lavishly clothed in rich manure.

And now it can rain and the worms can do their work.

We had an early start today for a courtyard meeting. And we are homing in on the solution which is welcome and fun. Bebere is leaning towards a rammed earth crushed gravel as a covering, And we are going to use the local stones (that came out of the  basement) for the rill which will run down the middle of the courtyard and hopefully avoid minor flooding.

We had to go and see someone else’s home with a similar covering just to check.

It is a bit of a departure for us as there will be no gravel as we know it. (I miss the gravel already as it was always clean underfoot, not matter the amount of rain.)

So we went for a two hour walk around the mountain to go and look at someone’s driveway. As you do.  It wasn’t raining, and it was lovely to have an explore.  And it’s always fun to see our house on the mountain top from afar. If you squint hard you can see our home in the middle.

Now that long walk (with a big pull uphill at the finish) ought to have been enough fun and games for one day.  But no.  There was a pine tree to sort out and a few cubic metres of oak firewood to throw to a lower terrace.  We did that in the almost dark.

This pine tree is a huge feature of our east garden.  And for the past six (or is it seven?) years I have been thwacked in the head with the lower branches each and every time I pass with the lawn mower.

And you would think that I would have done something about it years ago. But there you go. It was on my new year’s list and it is now sorted. Two huge lower branches chain sawed into bits and sent to the chipping pile.

And what a delight. No more facial injuries and minor lacerations from the prickly pine.

Bad weather is coming so I’m not sure I can keep up this relentless pace, but it feels so good to be improving the farm at last.

My biggest challenge is going to be the glaring gap of the soft fruit orchard just below the potager.

I haven’t come up with a solution yet. Here are a few metal poles placed over the gap to try and see if I can fill in the glaring space with soil.

what I need to do is put in a tonne of stones and boulders and then fill the whole area with the spare soil.  But there are no solid foundations on which to rebuild my wall.

I’ve planted newly propagated jostaberries in other parts of the garden, but it will be such a shame to have to abandon this area for good.  The jostaberry bushes in this area are huge and so productive. But I don’t want to die picking them in June.

Watch this space.