A Trench

"we'll start by messing up your garden"   is what Juliet said this afternoon ... clearly a woman of some honesty and not one to give the customer any daft ideas about what would be involved :-)

Not a good morning for her and Rob to start on our garden with some heavyish rain showers, so they delayed until 14:00 and then decided to make a start on the trench for the French Drain.  Our house faces due south, good for the solar panels, not so good for light in the back garden.  The camera is stood below our kitchen window and these first couple of metres of the lawn never get any real sunlight.  With the clay soil it all gets very damp in the winter,  hence the extra drainage being put in.
In the distance you can see the fence, and beyond that, the rail cutting where the run-off water will end up.  The rest of the project is basically to re-lay the path to the garage,  relay and expand the patio in front of the shed and put in another paved seating area off to the left. Several metres of edging to go in too - which should make it easier to cut the lawn :-)

Juliet did the half nearest the camera and has had to hack her way through layers of clay.  Rob did the far half and had to use a breaker chisel to clear out lots of stone left from when this was part of a poultry farm before the houses were built.

A dry forecast over the weekend and into next week so when they return on Monday they should have an easier time.
More diary blips to follow!