FINIALLY IT STOPS RAINING FOR A DAY!

 So we have been able to get out into the garden. We have taken the two old arbour benches apart and re sited one down on the stone circle at the end of the garden.

 

You can catch a glimpses here

It's more visible than the blue metal bench especially now in the winter but once it's had a new coat of stain or paint and the trees and shrubs grow their leaves it won't seem so big.

The raised bed is looking lovely and full

The hellebores adding a nice splash of pink to the greens.

Along with the purple of the crocuses.

Back in the flower garden we have been filling in the edges with homemade compost and playing musical pots!

We have four large blue pots which have always stood one either side of the arbour benches. But some of the pots would get covered above by plants growing in the borders and one would always have a lovely display for trailing plants every year.

So we placed them back where they used to be.

But remembering how they'd get covered, we decided to try them in a few other places.

One was to have them either side of the path to the arbour seats as shown.

Another was to place one in each of the four borders halfway round each circle curve.

Or to place them just the other side of the path into the arbour seats. At the moment we are deciding between on the paving either side of the arbour seat path or in the border either side of the arbour seat path!

Guinevere has gone back on her column and hopefully we won't have any more gales for a while and she can stay in place.

ALL FINISHED

 Well the paving is! Now it's down to us to tidy and fill in.

The step up on the uphill side of the flower garden is all paved and looking good

The downhill side has now been levelled and due to them doing the perfectly even circle with the four small paths off, our concrete seat base on this side was slightly out of line with it's opposite sister seat. S

Now, I was all for putting the arbour bench seats back in place and sanding them down for a re-stain later in the spring. But Paul decided that now was the time to buy a couple of new ones. These ones are eighteen years old, so have given good service and are still sturdy with only a little bit of rot here and there.

They are also very heavy, so this one, which the landscapers moved into the middle of the space, we left rather than try and get it back up to the raised area.

Since they put this one on the flowerbed ! at the side, we only had to heave it up onto the new paved area.

Now these one's are not going to waste! We are giving one to our next door neighbour and the other we are going to put down on the paved circle at the end of the garden and move that tall metal blue bench into the raised pond garden. The small white metal bench that's in that garden will be moved elsewhere.

So we'll be taking the benches apart and moving them to their new homes over the weekend, ready to receive the new benches next week. Al though these will need painting and a little bit of tweaking but more about that once they are all done.