Non-Gardener builds an Observatory, Garden Railway and even Dabbles with Plants!

Early March 2023

It turned really cold at the end of February and early March, then on the 7th, the snow came. With the ground frozen and freezing temperatures, I found warmer things to do indoors!



The initial snow melted and then came back heavier a few days later. I was content to just watch the garden from the sun room, waiting for it to improve before getting back to work outside.

 

Your telescopes and observatory are impressive. We have a close neighbour, whose current telescope is a Vaonis Stellina. He was demonstrating it to us earlier in the year and he operates it through his smart phone. He had taken photos of a super nova 15 billion light years away and he submits them to Nasa. I think it will be visible again in 10 years time due to gravity bending the light?

But more recently, is there about to be a nova explosion at T CrB? Should we all be rushing outside - apparently it may be visible to the naked eye and may happen this month. Do you know any thing about this? Hope you will let us all know if it happens.

 

Supernovas are very hard to predict, so I'm surprised the articles are giving such a precise date as sometime in September. No doubt as soon as it happens, news will spread through the astro forums and everyone will be out looking!

 

21st March 2023

On the 21st, we had a large delivery of slate, river gravel and top soil; all dumped on the drive at the front of the house. Most of it was needed 200+ feet away at the back of the house.



I didn't fancy wheelbarrowing almost 6,000Kg of stuff to the back garden, so decided my 1944 Dodge Weapon Carrier could earn its living! I didn't want to lift a whole 850Kg bag with the crane, so decanted some of the large bags into some half ton bulk bags. They were then lifted into the Dodge and driven around to the back garden.

 

The topsoil was dropped by the shed and was to be used to top up the raised bed veggie planters.



The other bags were dropped off at the workshop Laurel hedge. While it took a bit of effort part emptying the bulk bags to lift, it was far less effort than using the wheelbarrow over a gravel drive for everything!

 

23rd March 2023

The 23rd was spent shovelling topsoil from the bags into the veggie planters. The 6 x 3ft planters swallowed up large amounts of soil, but we got there in the end. We'd dig some compost in before planting, though the soil itself was a really nice quality - unlike the clay garden.



24th March 2023

On Friday the 24th, I began to empty my trailer of aircraft, as I needed to use it the following day to collect some materials.



It took a while to unload the aircraft and then further dismantle the B-17, which would then be stored in the workshop. Everything was then ready for a heavyweight collection the next day.

 

This one is just a nova rather than a supernova. It happens approx every 80 years and involves a white dwarf and a red giant. Apparently there is evidence that something is about to happen.

 

25th March 2023 - Track Collection Day

It was a rather wet day as I set off for a local heritage railway with the trailer. I left the car and trailer in the car park and went searching for volunteers. They'd already gathered the bits I was after. Below are fourteen rail chairs, the oldest was I think from 1939. These support the rail on the sleepers.



Along with the chairs was a bucket full of screws, to attach the chairs to the sleepers. You won't get these at B&Q!!

 

Here's the seven sleepers, seen back at home, stacked up beside the garage. Unlike the garden sleepers you get at DIY stores and garden centres, these are quite a bit bigger, hardwood which is possibly oak, very dense and unbelievably heavy. They were loaded with a forklift truck, while back home, Lynne and I dragged them out by hand.



The last thing on the shopping list was four pieces of rail. Since my trailer was 12 feet long and I was after around 16 feet of track, I got the rail in four pieces, two of which can be seen here. Based on a mainline weight of 130 pounds per yard, these must have been around 400 pounds each.

By the time I got home and unloaded the sleepers next to the garage and the chairs and screws inside the garage, I was done for! The rails could stay in the trailer until needed, as the B-17 would fit in over the top of them. I think I waited until the following day to put the B-17 away, as it rained all day on the 25th.

 

26th March 2023

With the trailer out from between the garage and shed, it left an ideal space to get the slate moved to where it needed spreading. The Dodge was brought back out again and a few of the small bulk bags lifted and dropped off at the back of the shed.



From there, we could fill buckets and begin spreading it around the back of the observatory and around the veggie planters. As more and more slate was spread out, we were able to remove the roof tiles and bricks that had been holding the weed membrane in place.

 

There's around three inches of slate covering the weed membrane, giving a firm dry area to walk on and restricting weed growth. The few weeds that have tried to grow there have been easy to pull out. After the first batch of bags were emptied, we had to refill them from the large bulk bags on the drive and crane them back around to the shed to continue.



We started spreading around noon and had finished by 6:30pm. Other than a path along the Hawthorn hedge, this area of the garden was complete!

 

This thread is my bedtime reading….just like a book, a few pages at a time and completely hooked by it. It is so interesting to see all the progress you are both making, bit by bit and with some very hard graft in between. Totally amazing work and such a huge difference you are making to your outside space. Very well done. Keep posting, I eagerly await the next instalment.

 

@Songbird Pleased you are enjoying the story. While the work in the garden is still ongoing today, we are nearly finished all the landscaping etc., and will soon be onto ongoing maintenance. The story as it stands now, is still eighteen months behind present day, so there's a lot more story to tell!

30th March 2023

We had a guy in with a stump grinding machine on the 30th. There were eight more stumps in the lawn and railway area that needed to go before we could level off the ground. During one grind, he found part of the air raid shelter floor. Comparing it to the sleepers, you can see it's quite a lump, around ten to twelve inches thick and about two feet square. We dragged it out of the way and it would be buried again later.



By the time he had finished with stumps and roots, the garden was taking on the appearance of a lunar landscape. The loose soil and holes were going to take some filling and packing in of earth to make sure it didn't settle. In some respects, the clay soil helped, as once it was packed down, it didn't want to move and sets like a slab of concrete!

 

1st & 2nd April 2023

In our bulk delivery, one bag was river gravel. Quite a lot of this was back filled against the sleeper wall, building up the earth against it on the new lawn side, to keep it in place. While I'd painted the sleepers in bitumen, this gravel would allow rain and moisture to drain away from the wooden sleepers more easily, hopefully prolonging their life.



Slowly, earth from the observatory spoil and the rest of the area, was dug and raked towards the sleepers, building up the height at the sleepers and reducing it by the Hawthorn hedge. The hedge was looking quite bare and thin in places, but with the trees gone, it was getting sunlight and was slowly growing fresh branches on the garden side.



During the raking and digging, Lynne's shovel want clang on something. It turned out we found more of the air raid shelter floor! It took both of us to drag it out of the way. Both lumps would be buried by the sleeper wall under the railway area. There was no point in trying to break them up and remove them.

 

Good to hear that we still have 18 months to go with this story. @Allotment Boy , I shall look forward to reading above, later tonight.