There has been a distinct lack of progress in the garden since I finished planting the bushes behind the house. (I see I have posted no photos of the end result – I have to do something about that soon.)

The last time I mowed the lawn, I decided that my next gardening project was going to be around the bushes in the front. Mowing around them is getting very frustrating. Yes, I was going to focus on planting a plum tree, but that can wait until later in the season. The lawn/grass needs to go NOW, so I can plant something else underneath and around those bushes. Something that doesn’t need mowing.


I’ve been digging here for some days already. Today I mostly finished cutting away the sod. I started out with a more curved shape for the planting, but then I started thinking about maintenance, and keeping the grass away from this new planting. I like the steel edging I’ve used before – but it’s quite stiff and I don’t think it can be bent into those shapes. So today I evened out those curves.

Digging under bushes is not a lot easier than mowing there… the branches of those Chaenomeles bushes lie close to the ground and are a bit of a tangle. I tried getting them out of the way by binding them up with string, but in the end the best solution I found was to just push a bunch of branches to the side and stab a garden fork in the ground in front of them to keep them there. That’s why it looks in the photos like I’m wielding two spades at the same time.

Eric and Adrian were out catching Pokemons while I was digging, and came back just when I had set up my camera on a tripod. Adrian took charge of the camera instead and took some action photos.

Then he tried digging, and discovered just how stiff the clay soil is here. His body weight is simply not enough to push the spade into the ground. Mine is – sometimes barely.