Renovation Project - Gardening in rural France

Renovation Project - Gardening in rural France

I have been working on the garden now for a few days and to be honest it is killing me, I have managed to remove all of the bramble and the wood and the slate! You would not believe how much slate there actually is from one small roof!

 We had already used some of this slate on the footpath down to the back door but now I am also going to make some small footpaths around the new patio and from the footpath to the patio (it’s at this point that I realise that I have no idea just how big 4 inches actually is!) John said to dig a trench, 4 inches deep, which I did, it was only when he came out and shouted what the ****** have you been doing that I realised the trench was actually 12 inches deep and not 4, no wonder I was so knackered!

 

But surprisingly I do find the original drain pipe, not sure if this will work again but the new slate will be going over this so that there will be somewhere for the rain to drain too.

I fill it back in a bit and then have the joy of sitting with one of the large buckets and a hammer and breaking slates into little bits to get enough to cover the footpaths. You can buy broken slate to do this and have it delivered to the house, but as we have so much here and have managed to recycle so many other bits of the house it makes sense to recycle the slate (it really makes sense to John as he is not the one doing this job!). I would advise anybody doing this to be very careful though, the slate is unforgiving, as is the hammer, especially if you hit your finger with it!!!!!!!

I also have all of my new plants to put in the garden but I do not really know where to put the them, it’s at times like this that I really miss my mum, she is great in the garden and would know exactly what to do with everything and just what we would need, I somehow missed the green finger gene. I call and ask Sheila if she could help and she comes around and sets everything out all I have to do now is dig the holes and plant them.

I lose count of how many times I have raked the soil over to try to get the ground even, but on a positive note all of this work is doing my new slim line figure the world of good, I think I am also getting some muscle tone (and the muscle tone is no longer hiding under the fat!!!!!) 

Top tips:

• Do not hit your finger with the hammer, it hurts!