I wouldn’t want to be a landscape gardener in this hot weather. Even with the benefit of the breezy effects of the Cheshire Gap wafting across the fields. I couldn’t do with all the being outside in the blazing sun with my shirt off, hefting great lumps of limestone paving slabs around, wrangling large sleepers into place, mixing load after load of cement, creating as much mess as humanly possible…
So I didn’t blame Dan, Charlie and A.N Other (name still unknown) calling it a day at 4 p.m today. I was relieved to feel the blessing of the ensuing silence, too. There’s a lot of noise and dust involved in the cutting of limestone and chunks of sleepers. I don’t do noise very well. ‘It’ll look amazing when it’s finished,’ I keep telling myself. First World middle-class problems, eh? I mustn’t complain give what’s going on in the rest of the world. And I’ve arranged for a hamper full of baked goodies to be sent to Gill and Don, our neighbours, by way of saying thanks for putting up with all the commotion of the build. We are very lucky to have neighbours like Gill and Don. And Don, especially, likes a bit of cake and biscuit type stuff.
Here then, is state of play at the end of Day 3. In case you are wondering, I took these photos standing amongst the builders’ mess, with my bare ankles dangerously close to an expired circular saw blade that has been carelessly cast aside like an exhausted greyhound. I have to watch where I’m standing at the moment. There’s no telling what I might stand in/on of a pointy, sharp and abrasive nature…
‘You won’t be able to go up your garden this evening,’ said Dan. ‘You can’t tread on the slabs yet.’
‘I have to go up the garden,’ said I. ‘Edith and Sidney are up the garden. And the greenhouse and veg need watering.’ But I promised not to tread on the slabs. No one was interested enough to ask who Edith and Sidney were. But then bunnies probably aren’t the landscape gardener’s best friends.
And so I mountaineered up the flower bank to the right of the photo, running the gauntlet with a massive rose bush and trying to avoid some newly planted love-in-a-mist a.k.a nigellas which I found being squished by an abandoned slab. I removed the slab, muttered ‘All will be well’ under my breath and gave the flowers some (hopefully) rejuvenative water. Sheesh….
The Idiot Bantams have been showing great interest in the array of tools that have been left scattered hither and thither all over the place. Whilst there is no love lost ‘twixt me and them, I do hope I don’t end up with a one-legged cockerel or a flattened hen. But I feel spending two hours trying to tidy everything into a safe and tidy pile will be a futile waste of my time.
Car parking is going to be an issue tomorrow as neither Andy nor I are at work and there is still a massive trailer and loads of building materials dotted around the drive. Dan keeps saying, ‘We’ll sort something out,’ but he doesn’t actually say what the ‘something’ is. Or how. So I think the best thing would be if Andy and I cleared off out for the day and left them to it.
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