So I've been talking about circles in our grass for quite a while now, but last week they finally happened. Or started to happen. The skip arrived Tuesday and the next day was all about collecting the junk from around the garden and the greenhouse and shed and starting to fill the skip. Feeling pleased with ourselves and wondering if we'd not got as much junk as we thought, we left the digging until Thursday.
It started by marking out the circles, and although we did this back in April back then we did it freehand. Now we were actually making the cuts, removing grass and plenty of soil we took a more scientific approach with a bit of string tied to a screwdriver. And started furthest away from the house, which was a good idea for a couple of reasons. One it was furthest away from the house and if we cocked it up it wouldn't be visible and because it was good to carry the earth a long distance while we were fresh and keen. Although it was the first of these reasons that really swayed us.
Thankfully though it worked out ok, and the first - and largest - circle we cut, actually looks like a circle!
After finishing the first circle - or three quarters of it, we marked out the next circle. In that one though we had a spot or two with some grass missing, and a ton bag of slate in the way in another place. I'm sure we'll sort both out, and the slate (there's another bag the same size) will go up against the edging that we've yet to finalise.
Clearly on a roll, we quickly marked and cut the next circle by the greenhouse, and marked out another in front of the yew. And then things started to get tricky.
We couldn't decide on where to put the next circle, it didn't seem to work as we thought. I went back to the photos from April and we'd added an extra smaller circle further up the garden. But as that looked right we needed to find a way out of our conundrum. And like many good problems we took a look at it from another angle.
Quite literally.
And we started from the front of the garden, figuring that it was important to get the circle nearest the house just as we wanted it and to make adjustments in the middle part of the garden.
So with a straight line added to mark out where the extra row of patio will go - we had enough slabs to lay an extra row and add a barbeque stand at right angles to the patio for MOH. The gardener's are coming to do that next month, but as we had the skip we thought we'd dig out the earth for that too.
The front circle marked out, we tackled the problem area and somehow it worked out and much easier than it'd seemed to looking at it from the other way - funny how that happens, isn't it?
We simplified this part too, as we felt it was just a little too fussy, and here if you look closely you'll find a mis-matched circle, but I don't think it will notice when it's finished. But I did smile when I noticed these sedums in the sun, standing behind the line!
So we now have circles in our grass, and a trench where the new row of patio will go. At the moment that's got a destined-for-the-allotment paving slab in it which is doing well acting as a stepping stone. We still have a fair bit to do though, we've decided on which edging to go for - more on that when it arrives and we start to fit it - and then there's membrane and slate to put down.
But it's started.
And over four days we carried almost 75 trugs of earth through to the skip, no wonder my gardening gloves were a little worn out!
