MOVING FORWARD..

Well the weekend's arrived at last and we could get out into the garden to carry on with the long list of jobs. We both had to be out this morning, Saturday, me at work and Paul coaching , so it was not until afternoon that we could start on the garden jobs.

First off we moved lots of old garden rubbish into the carport, ready to take down to the recycling centre on Sunday, we needed to move it before we started as the last part of the path being laid would stop us from moving heavy things through the gateway.

Before we start I thought I'd show you the Iris's that have flowered in the pond.

It was very sunny when I took these photo's so the yellow is glowing.

This is year is a fabulous display of these flowers.

Before Paul started on laying the last part of the path, he helped me move the covered benches off of their bases, so that I could re stain them.

These benches are ten years old now and have needed re staining for a couple of years, so having found the Lavender stain used for the sides and roof, I set about re staining that part.

You can see they desperately needed to be done. The roof on both are beginning to move , so we have decided to repair that part and then use some of the left over roofing felt , from the workshop roof, to cover them, hoping that it will help them to survive for another ten years!

My plan was to re stain all the Lavender area's and leave the white which had a lovely aged look but the seats were so bad I decided to re stain them too in the end.

But not having any white I went for Sea grass!

And this is what it looked like after one coat . The wood in places was so dry it's sucked in lots of the stain , so will need another coat to even it out. I was not sure about changing the white but I think these two colours work well together.

Being me, I of course stained it the wrong way round, having stained the body first and then the trellis, so will need to touch up the Lavender where I did not cut in as well as I should have. I managed to give this one an all over coat ( not the roof) and the second one had the Lavender finished but I only got as far as the two trellis done then stopped due to the time, after 8 pm and the fact it was getting quite cold!

Well while I worked on the benches Paul had been finishing laying the path..

He did a great job and it looks perfect with a small step down from the larger paving to the last set of four smaller paving stones.

a longer view.

Now it's finally laid!

Looking towards the gate to the flower garden.

So now it just all needs pointing which will have to wait until later next week due to the weather forecast talking about wet weather until Wednesday! Paul's done a great job, especially as he did not want to have to lay the path but had to step in when other plans fell through!

A bonus in laying this wider path is that it appears to be helping Izzy, whose sight is very bad now, know her way back to the house, so it was worth all the hard work just for that alone!.

Well depending on the weather tomorrow, we'll be taking a couple of trips to the recycling centre and planting up several pots and a couple of trough's.
Plus weeding, sweeping sorting out more rubbish to get rid of  and if the weather stays dry , we made be able to felt the covered bench roof.

We seem to be gathering more pots on the patio! Which still needs cleaning and clearing on the other side!!
Idea's for where we can put things, whose places have been taken by others, are taking hold, so a few things to try out as we work.

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