We needed to quarantine for 14 days on our return to the UK so we thought we’d tackle the garden back at Bush Avenue (Mark’s Dad’s house).
It was a mess despite the efforts of Alan next door clearing brambles at Easter.

We (both of us and Andy’s mum) spent weeks weeding, clearing rubbish, sorting re-usable stuff and generally uncovering everything.

Mark had bought a decking kit years ago and left it in a pile on the patio – a base was required for it’s construction … which took a few weeks to build.
The decking itself went together OK (with some brute force!) despite being twisted and warped.

Much digging and rotavating ensued to shape lawn areas and a border.
Fran fought with a major shrub root for a week. Paving areas were dug on the hottest day. The patio was removed, weeded and the base pounded to dust and the whole thing re-laid.
Four tons of aggregate were shipped in for the paving (thanks to octagenarians Andy’s Mum and neighbour Sam helping to shift it!).

Paving was laid, dry stone low-level retaining walls were built, edging was installed and finally turf was laid!
8 weeks after we arrived we had a garden!!

We managed to few days off … a trip to Devon to collect our cement mixer from Jane and Jon at St Olaves, a trip to Burnham-On-Sea to buy the edging and a couple of weekends at James’ place (Fran’s son) in London. Andy got a couple of fishing trips in and did some singing and we both enjoyed catching up with friends and family and wrestling with the allotment … but the bombshell news (dropped on July 16) is that Andy’s daughter Jess is pregnant!! Gonna be a granddad for the first time!!

So the whole thing was quite a slog. Not sure we’ve ever worked so hard for such a long period of time but the results were worth it and we’re glad we still had the energy to finish the job.