Friends and my blog follower will know that last year GM and I moved house to be closer to the granddaughters. The house we bought was only two years old, but despite that it still needed quite a lot doing inside - the previous occupants were tenants and left rather a mess. Therefore not much time was spent in the garden apart from keeping the grass cut and some of the weeds at bay. So, basically, the garden is almost an empty canvas for me to work on, and now that April has arrived, so has the gardening bug. Here is my blank canvas at the back
Last spring I dug over a couple of small areas in the raised bed, fed them and successfully grew some runner beans and tomatoes, which lasted us through the summer. I also attempted to clear the bed of weeds, and apart from the area on the left where you can see grass, I was fairly successful. But this year the gardening bug has already taken hold. Easter weekend was too wet to actually go outside for any prolonged period to do much but I've created a little potting bench just inside the french windows where I've sown strawberry, tomato, runner bean and sunflower seeds ready to plant out when(if) the weather improves.
The front garden isn't exactly a blank canvas, but it is typically just the same as most of the other front gardens on the estate, with pretty poor soil and planted with pretty low quality plants, so is rife for improvement, as you can see.
Easter sunday morning was dry for a few hours, so after taking this shot I spent an hour cutting back the lavender growing in front of the window which had completely hidden the plants behind.
So this is where I'm starting from and I'm hoping to show a great deal of progress over the course of the year.
