Socially isolated gardening

Gill decided she wanted to spend Mothers Day in the garden so she started off by clearing the paving at the front of the house and I cleared moss & pressure washed the drive, which all went quite well.  After lunch - sat out in the sunshine!     I cut the grass and she said

"I'm just going down into the dell"

Two green bins full later she had made serious inroads into clearing the windfall from the very bottom of the rail cutting and I joined her to start on a tree which had been strangled by ivy and needed some serious pruning back.  It does still look a mess but the muddy dip in the lowest point is where the old rail tracks were.  By getting access to that we can start to dig out something of a trench which will allow water to drain away more effectively.  Our neighbour to the left of the photo has done this with his section and managed to get the flat areas either side of the middle to dry out considerably. The intention is to let our drainage run into his and see if we can achieve the same result.  We will have to leave a shallow pool near the fence for the newts we know are about.

We still don't own the land so were just putting in time and effort,  the owners do want to sell but I can see the Corona virus issues delaying things further, so we are reticent to spend any serious cash on the project.  The low point in the skyline is the fence on the far side,  I should be able to get access up the far bank and set the trail camera on one of the fence posts - perhaps get an image of the deer we see occasionally or the owl I saw hunting last week.

Thanks to everyone who visited my journal yesterday and commented on Tysoe Windmill - all much appreciated.

We're beginning to think BoJo needs to get much more serious headmaster and much less jovial mate down the pub in his presentation style ... or just get Nicola Sturgeon to do the briefings as she seems to get the straight talking tone more clearly.

Gill is back in the pharmacy tomorrow morning - I am expecting more expletives at lunch or possibly dinner!