The wasteland! Where do we begin?

Yes I agree, there are some modern convieniences that it would be hard to do without :D

 

Ahhh, it's not so bad. It heats up water for the washing up and OH's shaving in the morning etc. So we don't use the expensive to run water heater much Would be nice to be able to walk somewhere useful though, sadly we're nowhere near the local shops or even... the pub!

 

You'll have to get a bike linzi. :D

 

And the blackleading, Helen. :D As an archaeologist linzi you should be used to digging.

 

Ive always fancied fitting a log burner with back boiler. The amount of free firewood thats gone to landfill that I could of had for nowt.

 

this might seem overboard but my mothers garden out in the outher hebrides looked very similar to the pictures you posted. and believe it or not the reason it looks so bad is the ground has in the passed been worked probably for a long time and has only reacently been left to grow wild. the best thing i found to do was to set fire to the grass and weeds when you get a dry day with no wind whenever that will be and once it has all been burned start turning the soil by double digging this will take you well into the summer and if possible leave for the element to work there wanders then next year start planting etc. the problem with being too keen in planting is once you turn perennuial weeds you must leave them to die off and this will mean spending the summer and well into autunm clearing weeds.
hope this is of some help if you would like to see what my mothers garden looks like now then feel free to look it up under shrub garden challenge i think the last post was around august last year

 

Wow Barra, found your thread, what a fantastic job you done, the heathers looked great, in fact it all did, love to see some pics this year as you probably have the gardening bug now again

 

Oh I forgot about that David :eek: but the old beautiful tiled surround was sad to see go!
Helen.xxx.

 

Those tiles are worth about 30 quid each now, Helen.

 

OMG David that's a blow indeed �£30 wow!
Wonder how much I would get for Bob? after all he's still quite cute after all these years too!
Helen.xxx.

 

But is he decorative? :D

 

Well, we had a bit of a go over the last two days as weather has been excellent - what a palava! Hubby borrowed his parents' strimmer, which spectacularly failed to clear any of the grass! We then had a go at digging some up with a fork, and found that the soil was as bad, if not worse than we thought - looks like clay soil, and chock a block with rocks, debris, and clumps of dead root. What a disaster! OH is very disheartened by it. I am pricing up a rotavator or mini digger hire now, I am reluctant as I wanted us to work on the garden ourselves, but it just doesn't seem possible!

We've looked on old OS maps and found that most of what is now our back garden used to be taken up by a rather large house and outbuildings, as we suspected. Great!

 

A rotovator is the wrong tool, you need a mini digger for this.

 

Linzi is there no building work going on in the area slip the guy driving the jcb a few quid to break the ground up for you you'll still have plenty to do yourselves.

 

Linzi clay soil isn't all that bad in fact if you're able to put in the work with plenty of digging and add some lovely manure your plants will have a cracking start off with it.

As for the rocks you could always use them around your garden on a rockery maybe? Hel.xxx.