Progress at slug's pace

Hours and hours in the garden over the last couple of days to achieve - well, not very much by the look of it. Extending the patio over where a fishpond used to be seemed like a good plan - there were brick paviors laid either side of the gap - so it just needed to be levelled and joined with more paviors - sounds so simple. Unfortunately there is just not quite enough space between the two already paved areas to make a seamless join without a lot of fiddling about - only millimeters extra needed but there is absolutely no "give" in these paving blocks, so the only way to get them to join up is to remove the pips off the ends and/or sides of the paviors with an angle grinder - one by one, until enough have been removed to get the blocks to join up. Hours of fun! and I'm not quite half-way with it yet.

The reason the header included "slug" not "snail" was that several of the bags of sand had attracted some of the biggest slugs I've ever seen in the UK - they were put out for bird food, and I think some birds have a full stomach today, as I could see slug trails ending in the middle of nowhere.


On a more positive note, the water butt is installed - just waiting for some rain now to see if it fills up! 

Also, wires have been installed on the wall between the fruit trees - I hope to train gooseberry and redcurrant plants into fans against that wall. As the redcurrant I planted in the autumn didn't survive, I have a replacement on order (Rondom again - we used to have three very productive Rondom plants so I'm keen to keep to that variety). It's not the best time of year for planting but I don't want to waste another year before getting going on the fan training.


Where the two above-ground fishponds used to be, I plan a raised bed - but before this can be constructed, the foundations for the supporting walls need to be made good. This first stage is almost complete so bricklaying should begin in the not too distant future - which will serve the dual purpose of creating the new raised bed and reducing the stacks of reclaimed bricks cluttering up the garden! That in itself would make a huge difference to the appearance - actually it will serve a third purpose too, as it will give me somewhere to put the soil being excavated from other parts to lay paving.