It's Shedtastic!!

It's only taken 9 days since it was delivered but my shed's finally up at the plopment! Yay! The difficulty has been that although I live really close to the site, vehicular access is via an extremely narrow track and if I was unsure that our car would get down there, I was darn certain that a flatbed truck wouldn't make it, so the shed had to be delivered to the house and then we'd work out how to get it on-site. This was eventually achieved through use of stepdad Da's estate car and Shanks' Pony.

Before the shed could be built, however, I had to move the carefully constructed pile of couch grass weeds because I had (of course) put it in the best location for the shed. This was no easy task, especially in the current unseasonably warm weather, and took a couple of hours of sweaty shovelling and forking to move the pile from one side of the plopment to the other on Thursday.

I decided that it would be too warm to do anything in the middle of the day, so resolved to get up early on Friday to start digging out the ground where the shed was going to be placed in order to level the surface. I actually managed to get there at 8.30am (and wasn't the first person on site either) and put in a good couple of hours of digging and levelling before deciding that a headache, sweat rolling down your bum cleavage and feeling sick was not worth it for a bit of flat ground so stopped at about 11, but I don't think I did too badly, as you can see in the pic.

Saturday (yesterday) we discovered that the car does actually fit down the track (this opens up possibilities of being able to fill black bin bags with horse manure from the stables I ride at and get it on-site with the minimum of fuss) so The Husband and I brought up what we could - the paving stones mainly and sundry bits of smallish timber that could fit in the car with a view to Putting Up The Shed on Sunday.

Step-Dad Da agreed to come along early on Sunday so that Putting Up The Shed could start in the earlier part of the day and hopefully wouldn't take too long. At 9am then we started loading the car but soon found that the two large side panels wouldn't fit at all, so The Husband and I carried them! We were not the only people on site this morning, in fact I've never seen it so busy, and everyone said hello and waved, and even a very nice lady who I've not met before offered us cups of tea! It's such a friendly site.

Anyway, below is a montage of pics of Putting Up The Shed for your edification:

Don't they look pleased with themselves?!? And quite rightly too, it was hard work in such hot weather, but isn't my shed absolutely fab? I so want to stain it an outrageous colour, but Cuprinol doesn't seem to do woodstain in Hot Pink or Neon Purple so I'm not sure yet. Perhaps I'll just live with it for a bit, after all it's a fairly vivid shade of golden yellow as it is. Might be nice with some really garish purple flowers growing around it, Morning Glory anyone? [ponders]

While the boys were Putting Up The Shed, I took the opportunity to continue weeding the space that's going to be for the birthday Raspberry canes so I think I'll put them in tomorrow, and the six Red Cabbage and Brussels Sprouts seedlings I put in last week are still there and in one piece so stuff is hanging on in there. When I put in my onion sets I decided to have a go at companion planting and sowed a row of carrot seeds between a couple of rows of onions (the idea is that the smell of the onions disguises that of the carrots and so the dreaded Carrot Fly can't find them). Trouble is I have no idea if any of the carrot seeds germinated because I couldn't spot them among the weeds that also grew so decided just to dig that row out again. I've also had the same problem with my 3 small rows of Rocket - put in the seeds, can't see the seedlings now for the weeds - so I think that's got to go as well. All a tad unfortunate but I have also been raising Rocket and Carrot seedlings in the plastic-house as well for just this eventuality, so all is not lost.

Anyway, enough rambling from me for today - I hear the siren call of a Gin and Tonic on the terrace while dangling my feet in the swimming pool and admiring the peacocks on the lawn, so one last pic and that's the view from inside the shed looking out: