I have been on holiday this week, taking advantage of the Jubilee weekend where we have two public holidays in the same week, a bit like Christmas, take 3 days annual leave and you have 9 days on the trot, forgetting about work, not that I ever really do forget about Maximo.

The garden project that I embarked on this week wasn’t planned, it sort of happened, and I got carried away. Last weekend I had strimmed the path down beside the new hedge, and with some power left in the battery I continued between the two gates at the bottom of our field, and a little bit more up the hill beside the paddock fence. Then it occurred to me that it would be quite nice to be able to walk all the way around in a circuit. Why, how did I justify it to myself?

All last week when I walked with Reggie around the same circuit the trouser legs were wet up to just below the knees with the heavy dew and long grass. “Buy some new wellington boots”, Victoria suggested. Mine have had a hole in them and have gone unused for about 5 years. But then I thought, the ash trees that are dying have started to lose some of their dead branches which get buried in the grass, only for you to stumble across them. If you could see the twigs and branches, they would be easier to pick-up. I also considered that in a few weeks Danny will come to cut a couple of trees down and I need him to take the wood back to the area behind the stables so that we can split and stack them. He’ll need a path to drive down, much better if it was clear. None of these three reasons were strong cases for the work involved, not if you combined the strength of these reasons together would a sane person have thought that it was a promising idea.

I kept strimming and after three days the loop was complete apart from some stubborn reeds which will need the assistance of a petrol strimmer. I thought that if I could get the path down to mower height it will be easier to maintain. The path, in part, is a bit of a sunken road, used over the years as access by estate workers. While the path is on a hill, it is relatively level, and the mower could be kept straight instead of veering to the side and into the paddock fence. The old mower is driven from the back wheels, so it shouldn’t be impossible coming back up hill. So, on Wednesday afternoon the mower came out and the top part of the new path was looking trim and then on Thursday I made it all the way to the bottom corner. It is mowable, the only part that is difficult is coming back up hill with a full grass box.

It doesn’t take long to fill the grass box, but we have a recently acquired parcel delivery box dumped in our driveway in Twickenham and this takes six full grass boxes before it needs emptying. With a zipper around the top, this is ideal, if it falls off our barrowless wheelbarrow, the grass won’t be spilled. If the whole circuit can continue to be mowed, then this will be far less effort than strimming.

With the circuit complete I must say it is nice to have. Reggie much prefers charging through the long grass or running around the edge where it is mowed. I’m pretty sure I will make use of it as well, perhaps a lunchtime or early evening walk, a way of increasing my daily step count.

Grampy went around the circuit with Victoria on Wednesday, I’m not so sure this was wise, he is 88 after all, he needed the assistance of the fence posts coming back up hill, he said. But he wasn’t put off, next time he would go down by the hedge and come back up the longer drag which is less of an incline, but twice as long. I’ve advised him to tell me if he were going to attempt this, so that if he weren’t back in half an hour then I would send out the search party, but I think if he is going to attempt this then someone ought to be with him.

In June we will see some progress in the valley. The two trees which are lying across the stream will be winched across. We will cut down at least one small ash tree which has died back to the main trunk and a couple of thicker branches and probably a beech tree that is dying out at its top and that comes across the stream at 45 degrees around the point where we aim for the first pond to start. Danny will also take out a couple of thin ash trees which are in the roadside hedge, which have also succumbed to the Ash Dieback disease.

Mike will be back with his mini digger to create the two ponds, pulling back the silt to create the pond banks and creating two small waterfalls between. Then he will cut some paths from the bottom to the top and expose the dry-stone wall at the very top where our boundary exists with our neighbour. This will give us a walk besides the stream and along the wood edge.

After that, I expect over the next ten years we should prepare ourselves for about five ash trees of a reasonable size to be taken out and we’ll need to consider planting some new trees. The new hedge has been a success, so far, and we have briefly discussed adding another hedge up the side along the path that I’ve just mowed, to make a feature of the sunken road. Great to have some ideas for future projects, but I will need each to get established first and workout the effort to maintain them, before moving on with the next idea.

There were some odd jobs completed in the garden while waiting for the battery to recharge. Two of the areas of paths and driveways that I had weeded, needed weeding again and next weekend I aim to spread some of the gravel that remains on our driveway, it is still a very large pile, of about 13 tons.

Luke came on Thursday morning and put in the trunking for the wires for the TV and Soundbar that will go on the wall above the new fireplace. He also, took down the wall lights and isolated the wires. One wall light will be lost because it is where the TV will hang. We won’t see Luke again until after it has been decorated, so hopefully second week of July. We have now fixed a week when Kevin will come to sand the floor, the 20th, so we will have an empty room with no TV for five or six weeks. Paul our decorator will return on the 6th July.

I followed Victoria back up to Twickenham on Thursday evening and we met Michael and Noa from the Cockapoo club for a walk Friday morning.

We had to call out a drainage company, the wastewater was showing signs of becoming slow to drain away and better to nip the problem in the bud early, rather than wait until you have a bigger problem. By early afternoon it was all fixed, roots had worked their way in under the drain covers and started to clog the flow. It was useful to understand how the piping worked between the four terraced houses.

In the afternoon Victoria and I took the bus into Richmond and took advantage of the sale at Crew. I now have six new shirts to wear for when I start the recording of some training videos. By late afternoon, my legs were beginning to feel like lead, and I was aching from the gardening and probably the drive up the previous day. While Victoria took Reggie for another walk, I succumbed to an afternoon nap.

It was quite a social weekend. On Saturday evening we went to Richard and Zoe’s also from the Cockapoo club. It was a lovely evening and the rain kept away. Richard cooked a barbecue, but we ate indoors, the spread was fantastic and plentiful, and we watched odd bits of the Platinum Jubilee Party at Buckingham Palace on TV. Victoria made a scrummy Jubilee Pudding, an Amaretti Trifle, and because she wasn’t too sure about the first attempt of the Swiss Roll, she ended up with a second which was taken round to Olivia’s for lunch on the Sunday. Olivia’s Moussaka was a triumph.

Polly and I both had to leave early. Polly to finish her last essay for her teacher’s exam, and me to make my way back to Filleigh. It was hard work driving back, I was really tired, and I went to bed very early and slept solidly for 11 hours.