{"id":4108,"date":"2023-01-17T18:04:16","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T18:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/?p=4108"},"modified":"2023-01-17T18:04:16","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T18:04:16","slug":"landscaping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/?p=4108","title":{"rendered":"Landscaping"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well this is awkward. Here&#8217;s a post from last summer that I wrote and everything, and then&#8230; forgot about.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s another one to come as well. But I&#8217;ll give it a day. Heh.<\/p>\n<p>______________________________<\/p>\n<p>The assault on the garden has been more or less a case of wandering around it until we have an idea that is good enough to constitute inspiration and then hacking away at that bit. It had been years (many of them) since a digger piled up all the nice dressed stone that had to be moved the foundation works and piled it all unceremoniously at the far (awkward, difficult to get to) corner fo the garden. And there it lay untouched until it was so covered in weeds that it was difficult to identify individual stones. It was becoming more of a small hill.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4118\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20210424_112549.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The whole area was a bit of a dump, with the old shower looking shabbier and shabbier and lots of piles of old crap we were vaguely saving to use someday.<\/p>\n<p>Lisa took it on as a long term task to dig out the stones and move them around so we could actually see what we were dealing with. We managed to extract most of the large paving slabs and lay them, but we were left with a large number of smaller stones and no plan. And more awkwardly, a small number of larger stones that were way too big to move.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4121\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20201205_142735.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Once again, Anthony to the rescue. I hired a mini-digger and he came and drove it for a weekend, completely tranforming the whole area.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4109\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220227_105229.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>He managed to move the big stones and build a sort of retaining wall of them behind the apple tree, shoring up the planned lawn area above.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4119\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220227_091324.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Sarah, Steven, Julian and I went round and collected up a lot of the rubble that needed losing and chucked it in behind the stones before some soil went on.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4110\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220501_184807.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And Julian started building a raised bed in the corner from all the stone.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4120\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220505_152554.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Naturally it became a race against the weeds as spring turned to summer.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4111\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220625_122259.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But we were determined and inspired and progress was quite quick.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4113\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220625_181212.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Both of us had aching forearms for this entire period. Those stones are really heavy!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4112\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220625_143147.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We managed to use a pretty solid proportion of them, and along the back where there had been a low wall anyway, it was just a matter of re-setting the original stones.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4114\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220626_142113.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"853\" srcset=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220626_142113.jpg 640w, https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220626_142113-480x640.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>By the end of a very hard working weekend, we&#8217;d finished the raised bed.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4115\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220626_145342.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"853\" srcset=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220626_145342.jpg 640w, https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220626_145342-480x640.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>With a fair amount of leftover stone which will be used to form steps and borders between various areas back there.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4116\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220626_175303.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I was meant to be planting it up this week, but here I am blogging about it instead. However, I&#8217;m not even going to publish this one for a few weeks, so I will very likely add to it and all you have to do is keep reading.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4117\" src=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/20220629_104143.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well this is awkward. Here&#8217;s a post from last summer that I wrote and everything, and then&#8230; forgot about. There&#8217;s another one to come as well. But I&#8217;ll give it a day. Heh. ______________________________ The assault on the garden has &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/?p=4108\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4124,"href":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108\/revisions\/4124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donatedhouse.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}