THE WORK BEGINS

Today dawned bright and cool but with a promise of sunshine. Due to it not being that long until the garden is being opened for the church we needed to get on with laying a new path between the old rose arch to the first gate which leads into the Flower garden.

We had already started lifting the old path and so had a place to start.

Even though the path needs laying , the washing still needs to be put out to dry in the sun!

We laid a board down to use while Paul used the sack barrow to bring in two paver's at a time.From this photo you can see that the path curves over to the gate. We decided that this time we would lay a wide path using two stones each stone paver is two foot wide and surround each set of four with some black blocks, then move the next set of four over by one foot until we reach the line of the centre of the gate.

We have 24 paving stones, so placed them in lots of different places for ease of use.

We leaned some against the bird bath, the wheel barrow was ready to use for both moving the soil and also the sand and cement mix for laying the stones on.

Even the side of the gazebo was used to stand stones against. So once they had all been moved to a place easier to use, we then carried on removing some of the old path and digging out the earth, which we took to the back of the garden to be used later. The grass we put into trugs again to be removed and made into compost or got rid of.
The sun came out which was nice in one way but not what you really want when digging and working hard.



So by very late this afternoon we had got this stage.

Here you can see Paul laying the last in the second set of four, this set still needs edging with the black blocks but having worked all day we decided that could wait until tomorrow!.

Here you can see, well almost what each set will look like. We decided to turn the riven finish opposite in the next set and then back again in the one after.
Our garden being on a hill means that the ground runs down from the left to the right, so it's very up and down, so takes quite a bit of fiddling to get each set level.

Paul hard at work.

So there you can see where we stopped for the night! Shame it makes the brick cross over look so rough but we can always tidy that up for now and we can always replace it with this paving another time.
We may replace the grass at a later date on one side with paving and by doing it in these four set squares we can replace a little at a time just by adding on another set of four each time.

So tomorrow, we'll be cutting out another square or two in the grass and taking up more of the old path and deciding if we need to tweak the design.

Hopefully I will be able to up date you tomorrow with a few more paving stones laid, which may give a better view of what it will look like once finished.
That's of course if Paul and me and actually get up and move about by the morning!....


********************************************************************************