Garden.

We bought our house last September, and haven't touched the garden since.  Not one little bit. The previous owner (whose antics could be the subject of several blogs) had mowed the lawn just before he moved out, and for several months it stayed quite neat and tidy.

In December it looked like this:




Hello Mr. Pigeon

Then this happened...




Almost overnight, we had a jungle on our hands.  It got so bad that the local cats (who enjoy an afternoon snooze on the lawn) had a tough time trying to find a comfy spot.



They must have really wriggled to get it that flat.

Anyway, I thought tidying it up would be as simple as 1) Buy a lawnmower 2) Use it.  Apparently not.  It appears that the only way to cut our way through our very own jungle is to strim it down to a reasonable height, rake it, and THEN use a lawnmower (of which we are now the proud owners).

Amazingly, we've made quick progress so far, and after half an hour of rigorous strimming (him) and raking (me), our garden now looks like this:




The somewhat dubious progress

It's not necessarily easy to tell from that picture (it still looks a complete state), but it's a heck of a lot better than it was a few days ago.  As we went inside, I commented "doesn't our garden look great now!", at which point we both turned to survey it and simultaneously replied "no."  Had we not been in a rush so that we could watch the F1 qualifying (let it be known now that I love Nico Rosberg), we may have got even further and made it look more attractive!

Once we've finished the strimming and raking (Straking? Rimming? Oh, maybe not...), we can finally mow and THEN...THEN we can try to make it look like an actual garden!  So far all we have is what appears to be a small Christmas tree (I'm scared it might suddenly shoot up like the grass did), and these little flowers (weeds) I found near the shed:

Blink and you'll miss them

This is all the progress we've made in 8 months. I think it might be a while before we're throwing garden parties.