Digging Over the Herb Garden

Having got the land-drains in the new garden sorted out yesterday, we were able, this morning, to break ground on the pond. My plan has been to dig it out from the bottom apex, near the apple tree, and work back to the top corner, at the entrance near the sweet pea bed. I've had to change my mind, though, as the reach and depth of the digger, and the risk of overbalancing, are problems. Instead, I'm going to do the bottom corner, then the far corner, and work back to a position roughly half-way up the side (basically, sat next to the plum). I think I'll have to then take the digger along the path next to the long border, to finish off, before driving out.

We only got a bit of this done before Katrina and Dan arrived: they're up for a wedding near us, and we're B&B'ing them. After lunch, Dan was immensely useful in helping us dig over the herb garden. We did the first half of this by hand last summer, and it turns out we did the harder half. The remaining area, we'd covered with weed-suppressant membrane, and it's actually had all the rubble from the house renovations sat on it. This has totally wiped out the grass, which has rotted down into lovely topsoil.

Dan ran the digger, turning this over, and we picked out the stones we found. We've also moved the last of the big stones from last time down to the growing piles around the pond, where I'll build them into the retaining wall we need behind the pond (the path along the long border is about 60cm higher than the apex at the apple).

The herb garden's now completely dug over, and tomorrow we'll return to digging the pond.