Admiration Day!

This is a friend from online who became a Real Life friend! She helped me move into this house last year, ferrying me about hither and yon, and even through her own troubles has always been here to call on. In this pic, she's admiring my beautiful mahonia shrub - I hear that the berries can be made into something yummy, and I seem to have a bumper crop, without doing anything at all except saying hello.

This one came as a bit of a shock tho - I was giving her the tour of what I'd done over the past few months, and came across this little monument to a pigeon - its where I'm creating a proper link between the crazy paving of the patio, and the kitchen wall - this sort-of-trench is going to have membrane over it and then be filled in with slate chips (sitting ready and waiting, re-used from my sister's garden) - but a fox has got here first!

And below is the spot, next door but one to the mahonia, where my little blueberry plants are going to go. The sad little pieces of wood sticking out of the ground are the remains of two packed-in rhodedendrons - I spoke to them before I ushered them out, and they were happy to go, as a rhodie shrub and rhodie tree remain. I've also been chatting to the worms, telling them to leave this piece of ground, as I'm going to be digging there, and I want them to be safe. The black plastic bag, happily for me, is rhodie leaves, which are going to stay in there for maybe a year, and hopefully rot down, like deciduous leaves. What can I say, its an experiment!