In the light of changed circumstances...

I had intended to make the patio one brick above the path level (it used to be three bricks deep plus a substrate in places) but I discovered today that a hefty yew root would then protrude through it. Re-plan - I'll make it two bricks above path level. So having levelled my borders, I started wheelbarrowing back in a lot of the soil that I barrowed out last week. It'll mean that I use about 16 more bricks than I'd intended. No matter - I've found another stash!

A great deal of this work is seeing what fits on the ground as I put it there so I was rather smugly pleased to see this evening that the dimensions I have ended up with are exactly the same as the outline drawing I did a couple of weeks ago. The proposed design of the top layer has changed though, so that I can make more use of broken bricks which I'd otherwise have to cycle to the recycling centre and pay to dump. (I can't leave 'rubbish' when I move.)

The coil-top border was a flash of inspiration - these concrete pseudo-Victorian-slate edges have been sitting on the garage floor for years so this neatly solves two problems. They'll look much better than this when I've finished.

I'm absolutely loving being on my own under the trees creating.