Dig that

I've been VERY busy in the garden this summer, in fact it's been my Big Project. You have NO IDEA how much time, effort and money it has taken to transform this:

Into this:

Woohoo!

Basically that raised area is an old carp pond that a previous householder filled with rubble and topped off with gravel. I shovelled and barrowed out most of the gravel and made an area onto which I'm going to put raised fruit beds:

Then we got the guys with the diggers in for 3 days...

Look - buried treasure!

Dug out everything for half a meter...

Filled it back up with decent soil...

And now I'm planting it up:

The centrepiece is a Wild Service Tree which I planted this morning:

Sorbus Torminalis, or the Chequers tree, is a fairly rare UK native. It produces fruit that you eat only after it starts to rot - and which tastes like dates. I am looking forward to fruit like this in, say, 20 years...

In the meantime I'm digging up the surrounding flagstones piecemeal:

... so that I can plant birch trees. I will have a Druidic Grove in which to sacrifice to Shub-Niggurath, so watch out South Yorkshire ;-)

Shout-out to Adam!