The fence panel between us and Jean's moved when I leaned on it. Not a creak, a proper sway, like a man deciding whether to sit down. It had been leaning since the March gales, and on Saturday morning, with half-term starting and the sun out for the third weekend running, I stood on the back step with a mug of tea and a list on the back of an envelope.
The soil in the raised beds was dust. It's been the driest spring I can remember, and the garden looked the way I feel in February.
What we fixed
The fence was Rob's job, after his shift. He gets home about 1:50 on a Saturday and was in the garden by two with a drill and the look of a man who's been told it'll take twenty minutes. The repair kit was £14.99: four brackets, a bag of screws and two short battens. The panel had rotted at the bottom, so it needed the battens, and the second bracket's screws wouldn't bite into the soft post. We ended up using longer ones from the old biscuit tin in the shed. It took until quarter to four. Jean watched from her kitchen window, came out to give her verdict ("it'll see me out") and offered to pay half. I said a plate of flapjacks would do.
The rotary line was mine. Its cover had split in the sun and gone brittle, so the line had stood out all winter getting rained on, and one arm had slackened so that the sheets trailed in the grass. A new cover was £9.99. I re-tied the slack arm, which cost nothing, and bought 48 plastic pegs for £3.49, because the old ones had gone chalky and I'd been snapping one a week since March. The line now stands up straight and looks faintly smug.
What we planted
Six tomato plants, £10.50 from a garden centre on the way back from Isla's swimming lesson: four ordinary, two cherry. They went into two grow bags against the south-west fence, which is the warmest spot we've got. Isla planted, Alfie watered, and by the end Alfie was wetter than the compost. The three 50-litre bags of compost went into the raised beds, which had sunk about ten centimetres over the winter, and into a couple of pots. One bed already has lettuce and radishes from a packet I bought in April. The other is waiting for two courgette plants Priya is growing on her windowsill.
The patches of lawn where the trampoline stood last summer got grass seed, £4.55, scattered in the evening. I told the kids it was a hotel for birds, which isn't entirely a lie. Jean has agreed to water everything while we're camping from Tuesday to Thursday, with a watering can she says weighs more than she does.
By tea time the garden smelled of wet compost and warm fence timber. Alfie asked why tomatoes need a stick when they've got a whole bag to lean on, and Isla, who will be nine next week and is increasingly the family authority on everything, explained that they're "climbers that haven't read the instructions". Mabel inspected the grow bags, decided they were the best bed in the house, and had to be removed twice.
What we left alone
The shed roof felt has had a lifted corner since 2022. It's still there. The patio is green round the edges, and hiring a pressure washer for a day costs nearly half of everything above, so the patio stays green. The trampoline net has a hole in it that Alfie can get his whole head through, which I've closed for now with three cable ties and optimism. The gate latch sticks. I've decided that's character.
What it cost
- Fence panel repair kit: £14.99
- Rotary line cover: £9.99
- 48 plastic pegs: £3.49
- Three 50-litre bags of compost: £13.50
- Two grow bags: £8.50
- Six tomato plants: £10.50
- Bamboo canes and twine: £3.49
- Tomato feed: £4.99
- Grass seed: £4.55
The sums: £28.47 on repairs, £40.98 on growing and £4.55 on grass seed, £74.00 in all. If a punnet of cherry tomatoes from Aldi is about £1.80, the growing side has to produce around 23 punnets before it breaks even, which is a lot of tomatoes from six plants. I'll report back in September.
