It’s here!  It’s built!  It’s in the garden and it’s full of stuff!  Well, only about 1/3 full so far but there’s plenty of stuff needing to go in there.

It looks better than this now, Thing5 and I painted it green yesterday morning, finished the trim and everything…

And we started tackling the garden this weekend.  Massive fun for everyone, all the kids got stuck in removing years of excess ivy, brambles and general overgrowth.  We wrecked one old fork and seriously bent one new one removing the first of the bramble roots.  Seriously, some of these things have main stalks 2 inches in diameter and there’s over a dozen of them.  Not sure the holly tree would survive removal of them, so any tips and hints on removing them gratefully received!

Over course of the afternoon, we turned the garden from this:

to this…

We found 2 decent garden chairs, took a huge sack of rubbish to the skip (all broken stuff, several chairs, one scooter, a load of wire and the random stuff found under the nettles) and decided the best way to get rid of the remainder was a good, old-fashioned, bonfire.  Well, either that or endless trips to the recycling centre.

Turns out dried holly leaves make for an incredible firestarter!

And all that was left of was a pile of ashes.  Nice.

Next step, some minor additions to my gentleman’s toolkit.  I’m thinking large axe, chainsaw and wheelbarrow…