Having said I would leave the final piece of hedge laying along the back of the house till next year, we had some sunny evenings and I had some energy, so I decided to get on with it.

It was a fiddly bit of ground to work on, being high and narrow. I managed to cut out the old fencing before starting to lay the trees. There were fewer than the other stretch, and they were much thinner, making it a quicker job. One of the coppiced hazels we decided not to lay, as it sit lower down and will need to come out when we repair the wall.

With this section complete we now have a long run from the section myself and Monika laid last week, leaving only the hedge at the side of the garden to lay at some point in the future.

With the good weather it seems destined that we get on with jobs outside. Chris’s brother had kindly lent us his cement mixer to do the shed base, and we’d kept hold of it in the hope of getting the patios done before he needed it back. However, the time has come when it needs to return to its owner, so we decided we’d better get on with laying our slabs.

Originally we’d thought we would need to dig down to lay a bed of gravel and sand for the patio. However, the ground is so hard and compacted from when the drainage was done, that we decided we could get away with a quick bit of clearing, and go straight to cement.

We dug out some small tiles which covered part of the area and put them to one side for future use or sale.

As always, the first few slabs took the longest, with Chris carefully getting them to slope away from the house, while I was on cement mixer duty.

However, once we had a good line, things sped up as we could both be on slab laying. Once we’d run out of cement we’d completed most of the side area of the house. Next week we’ll hopefully get onto the front patio, as well as finishing off those little gaps at the side.

As well as the big jobs, I’ve been getting on with a bit of weeding in the front garden. I was pleased to find some self-seeded flowers, including primrose/cowslip hybrids, coltsfoot (one of my favourite spring wildflowers) and lady’s mantle. Another nice find has been a number of chrysalis’, which will hopefully still hatch out into butterflies this spring, despite being disturbed.