Day 53 – Clearing the Back of the Garden

After two days of celebrations we needed to get working to burn off the birthday cake!

We had rainbow cake for Lucy’s birthday, and now Tracy has made an awesome harlequin cake! (Photo: James Kemp)
Gloves and tools ready on the bench for the family to get involved in clearing the back before the new shed arrives. (Photo: James Kemp)
The ‘before’ photo. The back of the garden is rather unruly, and we need to put a shed in there on the right. (Photo: James Kemp)
Two and a half hours of effort from us all and it’s looking a lot more under control! (Photo: James Kemp)
The shed base is clearer than it was, bit it still needs some work to liberate it fully. (Photo: James Kemp)
There was a spot of drama up the street, with police, fire and multiple ambulances at an incident in the woods. (Photo: James Kemp)
The evening ‘after’ photo. We’ve collected more things to burn, swept the shed base and stacked a lot of spare bricks. (Photo: James Kemp)
The raised beds aren’t quite ready for planting, although Tracy spent time trying to clear them. (Photo: James Kemp)
A slightly clearer view of the back of the garden, after the lawnmower and hedge trimmers have worked their magic. (Photo: James Kemp)
We could put a shed here. The base after the bricks were moved and the debris swept off it. (Photo: James Kemp)
We found some concrete slabs behind some of the bushes! (Photo: James Kemp)
After lots of hard work a plate of ribs! (Photo: James Kemp)

Day 40 – Sunshine, Trampoline Fun, Party Prep, and Marshmallows

The original meaning of quarantine was forty days. So I’ve been not going to work for longer than an old fashioned quarantine period.We’ve had a great day today. Most of it spent outdoors enjoying the sunshine, apart from a bit after lunch when we stayed indoors because it was too warm to do more digging. We’ve also eaten well.

Clean Trampoline Fun

While I was digging the patch in front of the hut in a search for the old concrete path, Alexander and Lucy decided to clean the trampoline. Armed with a bottle of washing up liquid, a couple of brushes and the garden hose they bounced and scrubbed the trampoline. As always it quickly turned into a water fight. Tracy and I threw buckets of water at the kids and they sprayed us with the hose.Lots and lots of fun on a lovely warm day.

Food

We had croissants with raspberry jam for breakfast. These came from yesterday’s shopping trip and made a nice change from cereal.Lunch was a home made quesadilla. We also had nachos as a small starter. Tracy made it all while the kids were getting dried and changed from their time on the trampoline.Dinner was even more special. Tracy cooked steak with a blue cheese dressing. It was really good, melting in your mouth and pink in the middle. There was no real need for chewing.

Party Preparation

After lunch we stayed in for a bit to organise things for Lucy’s birthday party. Although it isn’t for a couple of weeks we need to lost things to people so they’ll have part bags, prizes for the games and also some other things.Lucy helped us both sort it out. She enjoyed loading the laminator with the bingo cards. She got pretty efficient with it after she’d done a couple. She also decorated the party bags and helped Tracy sort out the contents.

Garden

After dinner I went back out into the garden. I delivered another wheelbarrow load of topsoil to the furthest raised bed. Then, with the wheelbarrow empty I took a layer of clay soil off the first bed and carted it up to the back of the garden. This was step 1 of the plan to establish a new compost heap on the left side of the garden.I then daisy chained both the garden extension cables so that the hedge trimmer reached the back corner of the garden. Then I cut and raked up the brambles and all the other weeds until the light failed. It took two or three passes, raking up in between each one, to clear the area. I think I completely cleared about a dozen square metres. Here’s the after photo that matches the before photo above.I saved a half dozen nettle plants for an experiment I want to do with Lucy and Alexander later in the week. I’d like to use the leaves to make nettle tea, and the stems to make string.Once I’d cleared enough space I decided to start prep for the new compost heap. This started with a bringing an old rug to throw over the fence to stop things growing through it, and also to contain the compost on this side. I then dumped the wheelbarrow load of clay soil and used it to flatten out the slight slope at the very back.

Marshmallows

We’ve got several piles of woody garden rubbish, and of brambles, that I don’t want to compost. The larger one has been building on our burning circle since the end of last year. The other piles only exist because we’ve tried to avoid burning garden rubbish.Tonight we decided to give in and have a fire. Alexander started it by flicking a lit match at the pile. It caught really quickly.While I was keeping an eye on it Tracy and Lucy came out to watch, and they brought marshmallows with them. The fire was a bit too hot to start with, but it soon died down. We spent a happy half hour watching the flames and toasting marshmallows.Eventually it was time to go in, and I turned the garden hose on it.

Day 35 – Working and Walking

Being Tuesday I spent most of the day working while Tracy was off. Apart from me everyone else slept in until after eight o’clock. I was a bit slow to rise too, but was first up and made coffee and wrote in my work notebook about yesterday.

Work

Work was slightly fragmented, but more broken up with meetings than anything else. I did manage to spend some time thinking about our roadmap to the end of the current emergency and being ready for whatever comes next.

Scouts

In my lunch break I managed to email the parents of the ten new scouts that will be joining Woodhouse Troop of 5th Reigate Scouts. We were originally supposed to be starting on Thursday, which is St George’s Day. However we’re not allowed to meet face to face.

Our other scout troop has been using zoom to meet weekly for the last few weeks. So I had a couple of chats with Graham, the other scout leader, and we’re going to run some joint zoom sessions, starting tomorrow evening.

I’ve got an outline plan for face to face sessions. So if the lockdown lifts we can meet up face to face and do some traditional scout things, like having a campfire. I’m also thinking about planning a weekend so that if there’s an opportunity we can camp too.

Lego Wedding

Lego Friends bride preparing to walk down the aisle and get married (Photo: James Kemp)

I’m not entirely convinced that Lucy did much school work today. Her project seems to have been all about looking after people, she helped Tracy with some food bank collection.

View down the aisle at the Lego Friends wedding built by Lucy (photo: James Kemp)

As well as that Lucy built a fab wedding scene for her Lego people, including making a dress for one of her Lego mini-dolls with scraps of fabric. She also spent some time negotiating with Alexander to borrow some specific lego minifigures to play the parts at the wedding. These weren’t randomly assigned people, they were all carefully chosen!

As you can see from the pictures there’s an aisle, a celebrant and a congregation. There are some fab details in there!

Food

Tracy made a fantastic gingerbread with lemon icing on it. I tried some of the plain gingerbread for my dessert after dinner.

We also had a fab dinner of Chicken kebabs with feta, Greek salad, piri piri rice, and couscous. There were also some wholemeal pitta breads.

Walking

We followed a usual pattern this evening. We all walked round the green in front of the house three times. Then Lucy went indoors to tidy away some of her Lego before starting her wind down for bed.

While we were out our neighbour spotted us and came to ask if we knew what the rules were about garden fires. Like us he’s got a huge pile of garden waste than won’t compost. We decided that if it’s done late enough that people won’t be sitting out in the garden and will likely have the house windows closed then it ought to be okay.

After our chat Alexander and I went for a longer walk round Merstham to get our ten thousand steps in. We managed 6km.