Before And After: The Shady Path

Butterfly Speckled Wood

As I wandered around the garden this morning, a Speckled Wood butterfly flitted across my path and settled, to cast its shadow, on the outside of the sitting room wall.

Like the roses

Rose Absolutely Fabulous

Absolutely Fabulous, still living up to its name,

Rose Chris Beardshaw

and Chris Beardshaw, just needing a bit of a trim,

it still enjoys the sunshine.

Here is the next section of the series charting the progress in the garden.

Copper beech – Version 2

Path to decking 1

The Head Gardener’s Walk links into the Shady Path, seen here first on 7th, then 19th May 2014. This path, although now opened up to the light is so named because it was then mostly in deep shade.

Cleared patch

This was one of the first paths we had begun to clear. By 27th July, we had reset the extant Victorian edge tiles, and thinned out invasive euphorbias, some of the roots of which were quite stubborn.

Jackie on Ace Reclaim bench 1

The following day Jackie was able to relax on the Ace Reclaim bench that we had bought from that architectural salvage outlet.

Jackie working on bed

Here, on 5th September, Jackie is working on clearing the bed on the opposite side.

Shady Path 2

This is what the Shady Path looked like on 20th October 2015. The trellis in the background now borders the refurbished decking.

In preparation for the winter which is bound to come, and in particular for the twice-yearly tampering with the clocks which results in earlier darkness, The Head Gardener needed lighting in her shed. Off we went to ScrewFix in Lymington and bought a battery operated lamp.

On our return Ron and Shelly arrived to help sort out the problem I am still having sending the party photographs to Ray Salinger. His son transferred them to a memory stick. Our visitors stayed for dinner.

Lamb jalfrezi simmeringChopped peppers

As attractive as the taste of Indian food is its colour and its aromas. The fragrance of Jackie’s superb simmering lamb jalfrezi alongside the fresh scents of the chopped peppers were extremely appetising, so who could resist an invitation to share it.

Jackie drank Kingfisher and the rest of us shared a bottle of Mu red wine 2013 that Ron had brought back from Spain.