Digging in the dirt...

I'm sure that there are some of you out there who are assuming that my temporary disappearance over the weekend was down to being whisked away by the husband for a romantic weekend a deux. 

How wrong you would be.

I had in fact spent at least 75% of my Easter holiday waking hours digging . I have blisters upon blisters, claw like fingers which refuse to straighten out, and have developed a dowager's hump from bending over piles of topsoil, compost and stones for most of the weekend.  I could cope with the beautification of my garden in readiness for the family coming over on Sunday, but it was Monday's disaster which pushed me over the edge.  

We have (used to have) a raised bed which housed our strawberries.  On Saturday, the husband piled in several bags of compost and I lovingly planted my new strawberry plants in neat rows of three (the OCD is not confined to the inside of the house, and plants are equidistant to each other throughout).

So, the family came over on Easter Sunday, drank too much, ate too much, and then went home.  All of the children were in residence (I was necking Kalms like they were going out of fashion)and they did all the clearing up, which meant that the husband and I could flop on the sofas like a couple of ancient jelly fish.  We had made plans for Easter Monday which involved a mahoosive lay-in, followed by digging over our allotment in readiness for the big planting out session next week.

This all went out the window when we came downstairs on Bank Holiday Monday.  Disaster had struck in the night, and the bottom had fallen out of my raised bed...literally.  Two tonnes of earth had cascaded across the lawn and had embedded into the log pile which was underneath.  My strawberry plants were clinging onto the side of a 45 degree incline like a load of reluctant lemmings, and the husband looked ready to kill.

His idea was to dig all the soil out onto a tarpaulin, and then leave it on the lawn until he'd mended the raised bed. Now history tells me that this is unlikely to happen this year, and the thought of a small temporary island in the middle of my lawn didn't really appeal, so I suggested that we spread the lovely compost around all the pots and borders.  Then, when the raised border is repaired, we can buy some more compost and top it up.

Well the husband liked this idea, so between us, we shovelled the compost around.  You have to remember that I had already top soiled the borders, so these were in danger of becoming almost waist height with the added compost, but with some careful placement, and frequent stamping, we managed to get rid of the landslide.

The strawberry plants have been re-homed in a wheelbarrow.  They look quite trendy actually, which is just as well.

I expect that they will be there some time...