With spring around the corner, I headed to my first volunteer day at the community garden, while Chris tried to tick off a big list of jobs.

Firstly he put some finishing touches on the ventilation system, cutting down and connecting up the pipe in the spare bedroom, and cutting down the black tubes protruding from the ceiling in the bathroom and bedroom to attach the inlet and outlet caps. Sadly it wasn’t possible to put the pipe in the spare bedroom as close to the wall as we hoped, so rather than just boxing it in we may build a small cupboard around it to better use the space.

Next he cleaned and sealed the slate in front of the fireplace, and painted the surround with black metal paint. Long-term we will put in a log burner, but for now this tidys it up.

While most of the worktop is in place, there’s one final awkward corner to do. Chris spent time cutting the back to fit, so now just the front needs shaping.

His final job was to clear the rest of the bramble from the back fence.

I spent several evenings filling, sanding, caulking, and finally painting, the the skirting and architrave in the spare bedroom.

Our big job on the Sunday was to finally finish off widening the drive. Although we already moved most of the soil banked up beside the drive, Chris was keen to try and flatten it as much as possible now one of our neighbours had lent us a mini digger. Chris used the digger to fill a wheelbarrow and I huffed back and forth to the pile of soil in our back garden.

With the drive widened, we had planned to drive the digger up the steps, using scaffold boards, to flatten the piles of soil in the back garden, but it was too heavy for the boards. Our neighbour says he has a ramp we can have a go with next time.

My one complaint with the wider drive is that the cars take up more of the view looking out from the window. I’m wondering if some strategic planting could help hide them a little.

In between moving barrow-loads of soil, I had a go at clearing a small section of the front garden to sow some of the packets of wildflower seeds I got for Christmas. The patch of ground was largely taken over by saplings, ivy and bluebells. While we want to keep bluebells in the garden, most of them are hybrid Spain ish bluebells, rather than our native species, long-term I’m hoping to dig out any non-native plants and just leave the native ones, but for now I’m hoping digging over the bed a little will give the native wildflowers a chance to grow, and then the bluebells will pop up in between.

Chris’s final job of the weekend was to take down a small dead ash tree. There’s a few more trees he’d like to remove, but he felt this was the most urgent. While he was busy Idris decided he might have a go at digger driving. He’s a natural.