Extreme gardening

It was a dry, warm(ish) day, and I opted to do some extreme gardening - without a belay or crampons - while MrM went into Huddersfield to play and listed to more jazz guitar.

The bottom of our front garden is on a slope. The main part isn't too bad, but the section at the bottom, to the left of the gate, below a wall, is precipitous (extras, but the photos give very little indication of just how steep it is). The area to the right of the gate shown in the Blip is quite steep but terraced, so it's manageable. The whole area has just a thin layer of topsoil over builders' rubble, and it's a case of making the best of what there is!

A huge laurel bush has been cut down, and several young leylandii removed. Two unusual mahonia that came with us from Northumberland have been planted. There are self-seeded foxgloves, Welsh poppies and valerian, and towards the top a little patch of orange hawkweed, which the bees love. Today I was putting in a selection of plants to join those we 'inherited' from the previous occupants. The new additions are insect-friendly, will (hopefully) stabilise the bank, and allegedly don't mind stony soil. It remains to be seen whether they survive the slugs...

In the evening we went down to the Nook for the monthly music session.