Well, it's been pretty wet here for the last few days so I've not been able to get out to do much in the garden. Before the rain arrived I had got started on some tidying up jobs. Until the garage was built a few years ago we had a large oak barrel in which we collected rainwater from the roof. Since the garage has been built there is not enough room for it by the downpipe. It has been sat on the path ever since, occasionally with a container with flowers in it placed on the top to cheer the corner up. I noticed that the top was looking a bit rotten so I had the idea of taking out the top and letting the rainwater collect in it and then getting the water out by dipping the watering can in. I took a sledgehammer to the top and it came out quite easily. Having removed the top I could see quite alot of daylight through the gaps - more than would be closed by the wood swelling when it had water in it. So I decided to demolish the whole thing. My first thought was to give the wood to a friend for their wood burner but then Mark reminded me that Bonfire night is coming so we're saving it for then. The barrel was originally an old whiskey barrel so I'm hoping that an essence of that will remain and that the wood will burn fragrantly!

Mark's sister has given us two small standard olive trees. We haven't decided on the final position of them yet but at the moment they are either side of the path onto the patio. I will have to get some fleece to wrap around them and the pots to protect them from frost. We have a large standard olive in a half barrel just outside the back door. It gets some sun in the summer (at midsummer the drive which is aligned E/W gets the sun all day) but not enough most of the time. The arrival of the new plants has been the spur to do something about moving it to somewhere where it can get more sun. The only place we can really put it where it will get more light is up on the back terrace. This involves making space and moving the immoveable plant and container! There was a climbing rose on the back wall. It had attractive flowers but was very prone to blackspot and only bore flowers high up. So I have whipped that out and tidied up the bed it was in. The plan is to put the olive tree in front of this little bed. I will manure the soil before next summer and then decide what to plant around the olive. We have yet to actually move the olive. Rain stopped play. It is at least a one man + one woman job. We are going to have to get the tree out of the barrel and move barrel and tree separately. Not a job I am relishing!

I picked some baby spinach the other day. As it isn't growing quickly and there are no sign of the replacement carrot seeds coming up in the little trough I decided that it was too late to sow more spinach in the half barrel that the kenyan beans had been growing in. I put in some hyacinth bulbs instead. We can feed our sense of smell and sight rather than our bellies!