Gardening.

I peruse a number of different hobbies. Mountain biking is possibly the one I’m most passionate about but I also have a classic Italian scooter and spend time doing various activities associated with the Scooter scene, which in Britain is vibrant. Another thing which I spend a lot of time doing is gardening.

Behind the house we had 3 raised beds full of life and the area has looked good for many years. My wife, Ali, asked me recently what I’d do with the garden if it was a blank canvas, rather than an established garden. I said that where the 3 beds are I’d have an Italian style sunken pond and within days we were destroying 20 years of work. You need to have vision to redesign a substantial part of the garden and faith that it will work out well. Ali and I trust our gardening ability and since she’s a school teacher with a 2 week holiday for Easter, we have a busy time ahead of us. I’ll try to keep the mountain biking up with at least 2 rides per week, especially since we have some good weather due from tomorrow. The garden project will be hard physical work with an estimated 5 tons of earth to dig out and dispose of in a skip. Here’s the scene right now.

We’ve removed and redistributed the plants from the beds, mainly to 2 new beds which will run lengthways in line with the hedges. We then intend to use the slabs which previously formed paths between the beds to make a large oblong area with the slender sunken pond in the middle. The skip arrives on Tuesday morning so before then I want to do another test on my boat. It will be at least very difficult to get the boat out when the skip arrives and may be impossible so I want to get the pond dug and skip removed as quickly as I can. Wish me luck.