In March 2012, I started work on the garden again, the weather finally being somewhat more friendly. The first part of the project involved the acquisition of a garden house and connecting it to the mains electricity supply in the house so that we could have power and light in the garden. This would mean putting down a base for the garden house, and digging a thirty-metre long trench for the cable.
At least I had found a use for all the broken paving slabs. I used them to create the base for the Garden house! Digging the trench was a major operation, since it had to go all the way from the back of the garden house to the front of our garden, then to the corner of the house, and along the back of the house and into the cellar through the wall.
Our neighbours must have thought I was re-creating the Battle of the Somme! Fortunately, there was already an old unused cable conduit going into the cellar, so I didn’t have to drill a hole through the wall. And we had more luck, because the husband of one of Gatti’s work colleagues was a professional electrician, who was kind enough to connect our cable to the mains, complete with current-limiting circuit breaker.
By the end of June, things are definitely beginning to take shape. We have a patio, a garden house, and the beginnings of a lawn. The patio was laid by one of Gatti’s work colleagues who does this kind of thing for a hobby – and for a small fee! The “lawn” was still in its infancy. Actually, it was still grass seed, but we were hopeful that it would eventually grow into a lawn.
Constructing the garden house was an experience, to say the least. We bought it from one of our local DIY stores, having seen it in their catalogue. Sure enough, it duly arrived, but not in the pre-fabricated form I had imagined. There were two pallets of timber, some screws, some nails, and an instruction book. Needless to say, it took me some time to build it, but I got there in the end.
The next task was to build a storage facility for all our firewood – of which there was plenty, thanks to old tree roots and branches – which I fashioned from some galvanised steel sheets that I found in the garden. Waste not, want not!
We had also hoped to install a toilet in an unused part of the house cellar for us and the other residents to use. In fact, we got the go-ahead from the landlord, and actually got as far as hiring someone to do the necessary plumbing and installation work and ordering the materials. Unfortunately, the landlord subsequently discovered that the space in question was needed for a new heating system for the house, so that project had to be abandoned.