Small boys and worms! What’s better than that?  Dirty hands and smiling faces.  That feeling you get when you’ve worked damn hard and achieved something.  Something you can look at and be proud of.

Since we started work on this garden we’ve discovered brambles, nettles, overgrown hedging, more ivy than you could possibly imagine and assorted bits of ex-gardening equipment left behind by previous voyagers into Bramble Corner.  No bodies yet…

We’re turning it around – and it is we who are doing it.  This isn’t just mum and dad in the garden while the kids are on the PS3 playing Rayman Legends (mostly) cooperatively.  Well, alright, sometimes it is.  But for the best part of it, it isn’t.

When I was growing up we had a long, thin garden stretching away from the back of our terrace house in Ripon.  Right down the end of that garden, absolutely miles away from the house* was our den.

*probably only 30 yards or so but it felt like miles!

The den was built around the base of one of the trees using whatever spare wood we had.  It wasn’t great but it was a place to hide and play whatever games we wanted.  Don’t know how many bits of Lego and Star Wars figures we lost down there!

When we saw just how big our garden was (after removing the brambles, the buddleia that was acting as scaffolding for the brambles and a metric crapload of ivy, the kids spotted their den site.  It’s around the base of a holly tree, they’ve used a load of the spare wood to build up the walls and used leftover ivy (‘cos we didn’t have enough of that) to camouflage it.  They’ve been racing around playing Avengers games, Dr Who games, Harry Potter games, and occasionally helping us by filling a barrow or dragging some stuff around.

Thing1 has helped getting rid of the nettles and ivy from behind the shed – we’re going to set off strawberries at one end, mint at the other, let plant-based carnage ensue!

We’ve discovered the area of the garden we’re going to put the trampoline (where the fire pit is now).  The area we’re going to put the pool in the summer (need to trim the hedge a tad!) and the area we’re going to put the Yurt that’s going to act as guest accommodation, home office, gym and summerhouse.  Most importantly, we’ve discovered the area we’re going to put the chickens.