Rain Stops (Garden) Play

Well, I have been busy today.  I've been wanting for ages to get the front garden gravelled, and I started it today.  This is what it looked like before I started.

The tulips are a remnant of a huge bed of them that I grew once for cutting.  I was quite sad to see them go, but, after I'd dug them out and weeded all of the exposed bit I had a brain-wave.  The bulbs I've grown in pots haven't done very well this year, and I think it might be because I have been using the same compost for about five years (erm, yes!).  So, I emptied all of my terracotta pots with finished bulbs in them, and deposited the spent compost on the soon-to-be-gravelled section of the garden.  I put some bits of broken-up terracotta in the bottoms of the emptied pots, for drainage, and filled them up with lovely, juicy, nutrient-rich soil which otherwise would just have been gravelled over (I hate to gravel over good growing soil, but the window-cleaner has got to have somewhere to put his ladder).  Hopefully this time next year I will have a profusion of beautiful spring bulbs!

Once I'd done that, I shovelled some of the soil off the top of the garden to make room for the gravel, then raked it over to bring the stones to the surface.  When I'd picked them off I stamped all over the soil to pack the soil down.

There was then a long hiatus while Alastair and I went to B&Q and looked at stuff and bought the gravel, and I started laying the weed-barrier and gravelling after a late lunch.  At about 4 o'clock the rain which had been threatening all day started to come down.  I held out for a good half-an-hour - getting rather wet in the process - until I ran out of gravel.  Then I decided that the rain was obviously set in for the day and retreated inside.  It brightened up for a bit as soon as I went in the shower and got changed, but soon started raining again.  I have left it looking like this, all ready to start again tomorrow.

It's going to look great when it's finished!

Time for a cuppa and a sit down now.