where first?

Crumbs!  Where on earth – no, rephrase that – where round about here will I go first?  I seem to be playing catch up – again!  After a quiet spell things began to take off again and I have quite a few things I can blog about now! 

First let me tell you that CB has been busy in my garden!  I can’t say I was tremendously enamoured of the way it was done when it had its make-over a few years ago, so between us, CB and I came up with a plan!  My first idea was to reduce the height of the long raised bed at the other side of the garden from the house, and that included the pond.  It had been built using planks, so reducing the height by just one plank width, to what you see now in the photo, would make quite a difference.  Well, CB has done it!  It looks so much better – in proportion - and I couldn’t help going out to look at it again and again last night before it got too dark – about 10.45pm it was still light enough.

In the process of taking down the one plank, CB found three bumblebees’ bykes under the soil. One (top arrow points to it) seems to be home to a breed of enormous bumblebee – all the bumblies that have come out or gone in that entrance are pretty large!  The second nest (bottom arrow) seems to home medium sized  and smaller bees  but the other is under the pond, and smallish bees use the entrance at the bottom of the pond planks!  I set up my iPad to video the action at the entrance of the nests but it seemed not to have recorded!  Not sure why but though I set the thing to video it often reverted to photo mode so was not recording anything most of the time… and I missed such a lot of bee comings and goings! 

So here is how the lowered bed and pond (where CB is working) looked when we were all but done.  We?  I hardly did anything.  CB did it all!  I just planned out the slab positions for the patio.  Instead of being like stepping stones in gravel, I want the whole thing concreted over, with the slabs close together, and a couple of narrow rows of pebbles, some of which I have collected in various parts of the country, Scotland that is!   I think we may get to that tomorrow after the side bed, under the trees gets raised by one plank width!  It is only one plank high right now.  Getting back to the pond though, it is actually two ponds with a cascade between them.  I need to get the pump into action again before it will work though.

One more thing that happened today was the arrival of a new “toy”.  I bought a food dehydrator, so I shouldn’t be wasting fruit, veg, meat…. from now on I can dehydrate stuff and store it in jars and use it as and when I need it!  Good to keep the summer berries going all year round for example.   Sun dried tomatoes, dried mushrooms…… you can dry all sorts of foods, including meat!  Have to go shopping tomorrow!

The weather has been great for the last few days.  Hoping it will continue!

Talk again soon.