The landscape lottery

I wonder if I were an archeologist in a former life; I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time scraping away at rocks and soil.

Trowel, fork and keen determination. I’m not looking for neolithic pottery shards or gold. On this project I’m looking for rocks.

That’s the lottery of the landscape project. I am hoping to find underlying rocks which I can scrape away and have something to work with.

If I show you the pictures you might think that it was probably best to leave well alone. It looks like a mess.

It looks like I have been playing in a particularly dirty sandpit.

I can see there is an old line of wall on the right hand side of the mountain.

And to my great relief I found the obvious break in the slope.

Some of the rocks are just lying loosely in the row, but mostly they are solidly embedded in the slope. Phew.

All I need to do now is remove about a dozen buckets more of soil and decide what to do with them.  I think I can get two narrow planting lines in between the granite rocks.

But I’m not going to rush this one. I’ll just scrape and scrape and clear the soil and then have a think.

I do have some spare irises which can go along one of the rows. That will continue the theme of plants just around the corner from this future bed.  But it’s possible that I’ll just take all the soil off and keep it bare.

I left the suckering plum in place. But removed one that was growing right underneath the chestnut tree to the left.

It was a handy hiding place when some squally brief showers came over.  Artur and I perched happily under the heavy chestnut canopy and admired the view of rain in the mountains to the south.

Well, I doubt Artur was admiring the view; he was too busy ecstatically kneading my legs and lightly drooling. Chacun a son gout.