Reclaiming lawns from meadows and taking down the wee greenhouse

The packing up of house and garden continues. Fortunately at last, we had a weekend off and dry weather, amazing and welcome! Saturday was spent trying to reclaim the garden from weeds and overgrown lawns. Due to a heavy work load over the last month for both of us and rain whenever we were off, the lawns have become meadows and the weeds have taken over the beds and paths.

Spotted orchids naturalised in the lawns and flowering
 because they haven't been cut in ages!

I spent Saturday morning weed killing while David and the younger two started strimming the lawns and raking the grass up. Once I'd finished weed killing, I pitched in with the strimming and raking. Once an area was strimmed down to a manageable height the lawn mower did the rest and we have cut and edged lawns once more. A normal grass cut takes Jamie three hours as there is so much of it. This time it took 8 hours, a strimmer, lawn mower, two rakes, a barrow and five people. But the job is done and hopefully we can keep on top of it until we move in  six weeks.

Some of my pelargonium collection moved
out of the big greenhouse for crating up

On Sunday after a lovely long lie with bagels and coffee for breakfast, David and Adam started moving plants potted to go up from the greenhouse area to the top of the garden. I emptied more plants out the wee greenhouse and crated them up ready to move. After lunch we started to de construct the wee greenhouse. Again team effort at EM gets lots of work done with humour and banter and rewards in the shape of take away later in the week.

De constructing the wee greenhouse

And Lo yonder awaits the big greenhouse,
 a jungle still to be tackled and dismantled!

Bagged and crated ready to move

Bracken kills a potato he found in the compost heap

Even mechanics have problems with bolts

Greenhouse plants move out

Its a fiddly job but a bit of swearing and hammer usually help

The bits are all marked and bagged ready for rebuilding at the other end, whether that be at the rental house or our own place in a year or so time. But guaranteed we will have forgotten what went where in that time, so hence the marking. As the guys said it is just a big meccano set at the end of the day.

Open top greenhouse

Some of the words floating on the air included
damn bl**dy feffing bolts, damn gardeners,
 f ffffff for goodness sake, etc

 Although tiring, we achieved an awful lot this weekend and I feel we have made progress outside in organising things to move. But there is so much to do, dry days and progress make me feel better about getting it all done. David is having heart failure over everything we are taking with us, and yes it is a monumental task to take so many plants and all my things, our belongings etc. but it is also very important to me and eases the pain of moving. I have been collecting these plants for over 20 years, many I have raised from cuttings and seed, brought back from trips, etc. besides it would cost a fortune to replace them and when we get our new place they will more than fill the new garden.

The greenhouse bench becomes a work bench