Bank Holiday weekend - and the power tools are out!

I took the children to see a matinee performance of 'The King and I' by our local Operatic Society this afternoon, and on our return we were greeted by the following sight - always guaranteed to have me reaching for the headache tablets...

...hmm...power tools, sheets of corrugated metal scattered about the grass, bits of wood everywhere, slightly bemused chickens peering through their fencing...In fact, the only thing missing is the flashing red sign saying 'CAUTION! MAN AT WORK!'

Yes, the Engineer is finally underway with his latest project - the Wood Shelter.

It appears to be somewhat smaller than I originally visualised (given the gargantuan pile of horse chestnut logs that are to be housed in it to complete their seasoning process protected from the wet soil and lashing rain that they have been enjoying in their current location:

Actually, log pile just to the right of this picture, but I couldn't resist the remaining horse chestnut looking so pretty!

However, having mentioned this once and received a none-too-friendly response, I shall gloss over that...

The kindness of a friend has resulted in us acquiring not only enough pallet material to create a good 'floor' for stacking the wood on and allowing the air to circulate underneath, but also enough also to create my 3-4 compost bays (once the old shed is gone that is - which naturally requires the new potting shed to be in existence...), and create a 'dust bath shelter heaven' for the chickens, who have identified the large divot in the ground left when the apple tree fell over in the winter as an excellent spot for said amenity and are already blissfully writhing themselves around in there even though the ground is still quite damp and clumpy! After all that I think there will still be enough leftover to satisfy any man's urge to prepare an ample supply of kindling wood ready for next winter.

Naturally the question in my head is 'where are we going to store all these enormous heavy pallets in the meantime?'  But evidently that is just me being awkward.

So let's turn our attention instead to the photo I meant to show yesterday but when I took it the first time it was so dark it didn't show up at all!

First quarter segment of the circle bed cleared of bluebells! (Well, for this year anyway)

Yes, the job is so enormous I have found it necessary to cheerlead myself on the achievement of each segment...otherwise I will sink into a grunting depression just at the scale of the task.  So here we have it - 2.5 days hard labour and I forgot to count how many tip sacks, there were that many.  But you see what I mean about the bare soil!!! So tempting...but it would  be so foolish to put anything there other than annuals this year.  I just hope that the poor lavenders and fuchsia that I had to be a little rough around the roots of, will forgive me and not turn up their toes.  The next segment will be even more challenging in this respect, but I can't see how else to approach the problem.

This is the next segment - just behind the well there - and it has many more shrubby type things in it with the bluebells throughout.  There seem to be more herbacious clumps that have survived the smothering so far as well, though I don't worry so much about them as at least I know if I need to I can dig up the clumps, clean them and replant them without them sulking too much.

Looking ahead, if I have the chance after finishing the circle bed, I would dearly love to give the same treatment to this area by the house wall just inside the archway...the bluebells here have completed smothered everything and it's such a shame not to have a lovely planting patch here.  And I don't want them spreading any further into the bed on the other side of the arch either - getting them out from amongst the roots of those mature shrubs would be no fun at all.

So, rugby for the children in the morning and continuing bluebell warfare for me.

But for now I will leave you with my blurry picture of the moon tonight - it was actually a beautiful crescent but the frosy ring around it has upset the poor camera no end...

xxx