Friday 10 April 2009

Good Friday? Wet Friday more like

The weather forecasters did it again - got the forecast right today. It was wet but warm, but we had no choice but to get some work done in the garden, as Lucy and Sergei were coming to visit. Lucy looked after Lara, so Olga could help Sergei and I to get the vegetable patch well under way. The HSS Hire shop didn't cover itself in glory, delaying me for some time because they hadn't got my order correct, so instead of coming home with two rented pickaxes, a manual post-hole auger and a multi-purpose ladder, I came home with a purchased pickaxe - they did me a very good deal, and will be delivering the missing items free of charge tomorrow morning, and only charging a day rate rather than a weekend, and will collect the stuff free on Tuesday. So although they did delay me, they have done their best to make it up to me.
Poor Sergei had done most of the work with a spade that would have been made a lot easier if he'd had a pickaxe by the time I got home! That was to turn over the compacted earth in the raised bed, but after that had been done, and it was level, he and I started on the 20 return trips down to the driveway to ferry up 1000 cubic litres of soil that had been delivered on Wednesday.
He'd been working a night shift last night, and they had come straight here and he'd had no sleep, so he worked on all day without stopping - if he stopped, he might fall asleep! It even meant that at the end of the day they took a roast lamb dinner home with them that we'd cooked, so Sergei could eat it there and fall asleep, rather than eat here and fall asleep driving them home! Very good thinking...
Anyway, it was definitely worth the effort, the pressure now will be on Olga to produce the produce (that'll test the non-native English speakers). Tomorrow we have to finish off a bit of the veg patch, build a fence, fit a baby gate and maybe mow the lawn.
I forgot to take a "before" photo, but here's a "during" one:

2 comments:

Mammoth said...

Hi, I stumbled across your blog while 'surfing' the Internet during my lunch break today. Are you a UK-Russian couple? From your names, this is what it looks like.

We are an American-Russian couple living near Seattle, Washington (i.e. Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks); also have a toddler.

The climate in this area is similar to the UK's, and we are getting our garden going right now, just like you.

Good luck with it this year!

Cheers,
Andrew

Chris Armstrong said...

Hi Andrew
Thanks for the post, it always surprises us (in a nice way!) that there are other people out there who are reading this other than our family and friends!
Yeah, I'm English and Olga is Russian. We work together in an office west of London. Our daughter, Lara, is 16 months old, and just started walking last week.
We visited Seattle very briefly, for one night, on a tour of the US in 2005, but we vowed we'd come back some time and spend more time there, it seemed a great place to hang out.
Keep reading, we'll be posting progress throughout the Spring - if we make any!
Chris