Garden tidy time (again)

Yesterday was definitely a day of action. My wonderful Mum and sister came by to help me blitz the garden and have a flippin good clear out and a well overdue tidy up.

This is right up my sister's street as she's a keen gardener who can't pass by a weed without yanking it out the ground. They arrived armed with all kinds of gardening tools and in the time it took me to pull on my wellies the first shrub was history!

This is a rather charming shot of my sister in action (sorry Jo!).

Everything was overgrown and messy.

This year I would like to do a lot with the garden, there's thoughts of adding paths, creating a few terraced areas, paving an area to be used for planters and for sitting in the sun (fingers crossed) and of course creating a veg patch, complete with a scarecrow - I've wanted one since moving in.

My shed and my greenhouse also needs a little attention.

This is the area that will become the veg patch and is the furthest away from the house. It's quite a tricky garden to design a layout for because it's so long and yet really narrow, we'll have to see what I can come up with.

Apologies for this photo being so blurred, we found this little chap under one of my many broken terracotta pots and I think I was so excited it resulted in camera wobble. He's got a look on his face as though he's thinking 'if I stay still she might buzz off'.

At one point Mum decided to have a pit stop and sat down on my bench only to find herself on the floor as it gave way under her...I can only think that either the bench was rotten or Mum has taken to carrying a very large amount of loose change round with her in her pockets.

And here are the 'after' photos, it all seems really bare but there's definite signs of new growth coming through so in no time at all I should be seeing......green!

We moved the bird table closer to the house for me to get a better view of my little feathered friends. Since Christmas I've become a little bit of a twitcher getting almost hysterical with excitement if so much as a sparrow pops by to have a snack, and when a mystery bird arrived I went out and bought a used pair of binoculars to aid identification!!

I'm lucky enough to have brilliant soil in my garden which is great but can be a tiny bit of a pain as everything grows so well and so fast. Last year my rhubarb looked like it had come from the land that time forgot, it was huge.

This is my old chicken house, I used to have two chickens but something took them. I would like to get a few more but I'll need to replace the house as it was made with untreated wood and has rotted, it would be great to have fresh eggs again.

We didn't tackle this bit, that's phase two...anyone got a mini digger?