A warmer weekend..........in London and Hampshire

The team on site on Friday From left to right: Nigel, Andy, Neil, Pete and Steve. I'm the lightweight at this stage - I get to go home at the end of the day! I'm no good at building anyway - but I am in it for the long haul later on!

They've just got a few tons of slabs to lay, two buildings to construct, a few walls, pools - that sort of thing - no problem!

Back in my Garden.............

While the construction team are busy on site I took the opportunity to catch up a bit in the garden. That's the worst aspect of Chelsea for me - it comes along when the garden should be looking its best and there is loads to do. The weeds grow before your very eyes, the tulips fade in the pots and need replacing, veggies need planting out and the grass grows despite lack of rain. Here in Hampshire we desperately need rain - a good steady rain overnight and nice warm sunny days - is that too much to ask for?

We've had a number of cold, frostly nights and last week they certainly took their toll in the garden. My beautiful fragrant white Wisteria is ruined, hostas have been knocked back and even the open blooms of rhododendrons are brown and spoiled. Sometimes gardening is a depressing process! I suppose that's the difference between a show garden and a real garden - A show garden has no weeds, no grass that needs cutting, plants don't die of hard winters and disease - It's a sort of fairytale world - somewhere over the rainbow!

I popped into the nursery on saturday morning to ssee Ricky - both of us are very glad to see some sunshine but those foxgloves still haven't moved and rosebuds are still very green - It is simply too cold at night and the pots take too long to warm up for growth to start early in the daytime.

In London everyone seems reasonably happy. The big trees arrived on site on Saturday morning along with help from Ben, Cat and Raf who went up to offload so that the construction team could keep building. Neil is a bit concerned that there is still all the paving to do and we may run out of time - in other words we'll need an extra day on construction. We will review that this evenin (Sunday). Ideally I like all the building work out of the way before the plants start to pour in, but we have worked both together before. We'll see what happens.

Anyway for me today, Sunday its back to the garden - I need to do about three week's gardening today..................Don't think I'll hit my deadline either.