And this is the be before one!

-- Photos shared with Fish Bowl Photo. http://www.pixiereef.com

This is the after shot!

Carpentry skills put to test

Shed extension now all secure, new door for log store aspect made and hung. Also made two versions of gate for the wall...but which one should we have used? You decide

There's grass in the garden, but not as we know it

Another rain-free day so we tackled the area in front of the house.  Firstly it was raked and cleared of stones (well we tried to remove them but quite a few small ones will have slipped through), and then we had to level it. Cue a nice, simple method that resulted in much hilarity - and a certain amount of intrigue from the cows, who came to watch!

 Next we collected the grass cores from the golf club - the product of hollow coring, which usually goes to waste - and laid it on top of the soil.  The cores have a mixture of grass, soil and sand in them, so hopefully they will bed in during the winter before we seed in spring.

Job done!

The lads have gone, the rain has stopped (for now at least), and we can finally admire the shed extension. All this rain has exposed a design flaw - we need a door to the log store, hence the curtain in its place for now. It's still too cold and wet to paint the wood, that will probably happen in the spring just as the grass starts seeding.

You can never have too big a shed.

Shed extension coming on nicely, more room for stuff that we haven't used for 5 yrs in the middle section and another log store on the end!

Need more topsoil.

3 ton of topsoil from the hill, kindly donated by our friendly farmer, but the hard labour done by us.

Poor trailer has been working hard, helped immensely by the introduction of air into the tyres after the first mega load!

Latest on the landscaping.

 Fencing is done and a new drainage ditch to help disperse some of the water coming off the hill.

 Extra points if you can spot Ruby!

 Two loads of topsoil spread....back breaking stuff. Ruby in shot again, she was intrigued by what I was doing.

Expensive new scratch post for Ruby

Water, water everywhere...

Despite enduring a month's rainfall in 3 days (and double that amount in 10 days) work continues with the landscaping. Today saw the fence put up, it will be put to the test in a couple of weeks when the farmer moves the cows... 
Plus a bit of levelling round the back of the house.

Cheeky visitor

Two blurry photos of a cheeky fox exiting stage right at 0740hrs, I think the cats would rather have the rogue cat scaring them!

Landscaping begins in earnest.

Scraping the Type 2 old surface off in order to put it back to grass at the front, levelling the garden off and filling in all the holes made when the bull and all his girls got in!

Also preparing the roadside surface ready for the post and rail.

Is there anyone out there?

We are thinking about doing some more posts, if anyone is still interested enough?
This is a picture of a rogue cat that has been sneaking in to the house through the cat flap and terrorising our two.
But, no more as we have got a new cat flap, we had to scan our cats (like scanning your shopping at Tesco (other supermarkets are available) and now only our cats gain access through it!
We are about to start getting groundworks done, landscaping and fencing, so watch this space......