Gardening is good for the soul

This morning I could have been mistaken for something of steampunk design as the bottled fuming crankiness must have let a steady stream of steam escape my ears and little angry nostrils.

I decided however that rather than sit about being charmless, I would go and attack the garden.

Before and after

Today's project was the northern front garden bed. The one that flanks the driveway of the house whose builder caused so mush angst in 2012.

One of the residual issues from his careless mess was a huge hump of clay pushed onto the garden bed between us. It had set like cement over the last 9 months. Early this week, in the evening after work I had gone out with the crowbar and begun breaking it up, but it was clearly going to be horribly hard work.

Yesterday I had another shot at it, but being so hard and the weather so hot, I didn't last long.... and then it rained and rained last night. Thank heavens.

So this morning, full of righteous anger for being stood up at 6.30am (it is a particularly special time to be stood up I have to tell you,) I headed out into the morning and threw all that anger into the crowbar. The rain had done a good job on my already loosened dirt.

My garden and the neighbour's petrol station- driveway still a little wet after I hosed it down to make sure I didn't leave any mess. The house is not finished yet, and though it has a for sale sign, no evidence of marketing.

After about an hour of that I could see progress was being made so I went inside to see if my date had turned up. Nope. So in a fit of peevishness, I threw myself back into bed and fell asleep so that I wouldn't dwell on being cranky

When I woke up I got myself back out there. I had lost the advantage of the cool morning, but not my will to see the job done. I threw weeds all over the neighbour's driveway (OK so I hadn't run out of peevishness). And carted a good portion of their clay back out of my garden and onto their builders' rubble.

I got the plants in, chosen from the collection I seem to continue to accumulate on my front door step, spread hay over as mulch, picked up all the weeks I had spread next door and watered it all in.

So there it is!
The front yard is done!

Bland home with stunning Ozzie colours

  
A few bits of twiddling no doubt, but the back bone is in and the hard work done! 

Progress over months