14th Mar - shipshape

Ever helpful and willing husband out in the boards for the asparagus bed. It’s been a bit wet but having made a scary order (you’ll find out soon enough) I set about singlehandedly lifting all the central paving slabs so that I could lay the weed membrane.

It makes a change to not be battling the wind with a 8 metre black sail on my own. This is what generally seems to happen when I take things on on my own. I get frustrated, stamp my feet, scream at the sky through gritted, grinding teeth and shout “why?” a lot and ”give me a break”. However no need As all was going quite smoothly. The slabs were up and resting on the beds. The start of the membrane was down and first staples were in on both sides...I was off!

About a metre in I couldn’t reach far enough to staple along the boards so no problem I’ll just kneel on the membrane. Dimwit! It’s not waterproof you idiot! The whole point of membrane is to allow moisture to soak down and stop weeds coming up. It does not stop moisture coming up!!! Two very wet and muddy knees. I gets worse, as I moved further along the path it got muddier and muddier and I was sliding on a kind of child’s slide made with plastic and soapy water but mud! I was also leaving knee sized indents along my neat flat path...”why????”

Of course it would then start to rain! Why wouldn’t it?

soldiering on and battling the elements I finally laid all the membrane. Next step was to slip back through and lay the slabs neatly in the centre on a now very uneven foundation. Completed in the dark and not to engineering chums standards but I don’t care because it’s my site, my path, my mud.

I do regret doing this straight from work as I now have to wash and dry my work trousers by tomorrow morning!