Domestic delights

The great excitement this week has been my son's purchase of a ground floor flat in a building on a corner ... with a turret. It needs some work, and the ambitious new owners have got to work on the interior. My role is in the garden.

Three days later, we were off to building centre to check out paving slabs for the garden and a few other things. It's a vast place -

 with yet more outside, including about 100 types of bricks -

 More fun was the garden centre, getting "a few things" to fill a few pots, just to make the entrance nicer and add some colour to the back garden. And secateurs were needed, and bags of compost. (Doesn't it mount up quickly...)

 The front garden has had the larger weeds removed with a strimmer, but there were still lots of roots to deal with, and much raking out of long weedy grass.

Originally

Before

After - three grey bags of roots, grass, glass, broken bricks, etc.
(The purple bags belong to no-one, it seems; the real estate sign too needs taking away)

 You can just about see the two tiny ferns under the lone window - that spot is in constant shade. There will paving interspersed with plants, and some sort of screening plants near the road, perhaps bamboo or shrubs of the fast-growing sort.

The back garden gets a lot of sun - and had turned into Nettle City -

 The strimmer put that right, and the hideous old bedroom carpet is suppressing what's left -

A nice bench appeared when the nettles were cut down.

Six large plants (some with names unfamiliar to me) are now in pots; let's see how they do -

A good soak before planting

Keep hold of the labels, they're a useful aide memoire

The entrance gets a lot of afternoon sun in the summer, so the plan to brighten the shady door with pots of ferns went out the window, and plants intended for my own garden went into the pots instead ... for now ...

 Another highlight of the day was the transformation of the gas meter boxes from grey to white. Little things make a big difference!