Warm.

This morning the sun was shining on the waves but before long clouds covered the sky making the day fairly gloomy. But with the wind blowing from the south-west it has remained warm.

With no builders due this morning there wasn't any pressure to be up early but I was still up in good time.

Straight after breakfast I went out to the back garden to work on the trellis. My idea to cut out the bottom corner of a large panel so that it would fit over the wall of the raised bed worked surprisingly well. Once I'd cut the corner off, by hand because we couldn't find the jigsaw, I prised out the staples fixing the slats to the outer frame and was then able to fit the frame back over the main piece. I even created a slot to make a neater join on the inner corner. Naturally I didn't have a wood chisel and mallet (foolishly gave them away before we moved) so made do with an old flat head screwdriver and lump hammer. A little messy but it did the job. With the slats stapled to the new edges the trellis is as strong as it was originally.

Then came the fixing of the post and panel to the wall. It was harder than usual because access was difficult making it hard for Peter to get the right angle for the several drills needed for the job. But we got it done without too many heated words.

Once that was done I mixed up some mortar to stick down two bricks to make the base for the next post. Unfortunately we won't be able to put up the panel after that because there's a large concrete wall just where the post has to go so we'll have to deal with that. It's quite interesting to have to adapt my garden design around the problems as they occur. 

My last job in the back garden was to dig out the stump and roots of the mahonia that had been growing in the corner of the raised bed. That left the way clear to dig away the compost from the back of the bed. The wood that had kept the soil away from the garden wall had long since rotted so I pulled that out. Instead I shall make a wall using concrete blocks as I have some around the place. That leaves the gap under the short trellis panel to be dealt with. In theory we could take down the short panel and replace it with a large panel once I have shortened it. That would be neatest but rather than re-do our hard work I intend to make a small section of trellis to fill the gap. That will leave me with a shortened panel that will fit above the oil feed pipe in the passageway. Or maybe I'll put it somewhere else.

That was enough work for my back so took a break for the rest of the afternoon. While I watched tv and the view I occupied myself by taking some lots of my stock of plasters out of the paper packaging. When I go to the zoo I protect all my toes and fingers with plasters to avoid getting blisters on my toes and splits down the sides of my finger nails. Having the plasters out of the individual wrappings saves a lot of time on Wednesday mornings.