It's a glorious day and we have just had lunch on the mature part of our patio - potatoes from a customer of Dave, broad beans from the garden (first picking) and boiled gammon, followed by strawberries from the fruit cage and ice cream. We also cleared up some coleslaw made with our own cabbage and carrots. I do love summer! The photo is this lunch-time's update on the prgress of the patio. It's slow, and we have just finished the second ton of sand and 12 bags of cement and are waiting for a delivery tomorrow. So a good excuse to take it easy this afternoon. We ought to be in Mum's mobile sifting through her stuff, but that stress will be over next Thursday when the house clearance firm come and take everything away. When they came to look last week and gave us an estimate I thought they were coming to value a few items, but they gave us a price for the lot. Now we are caught with not being able to remove stuff that they might have seen and included in the price! I'll be glad when it's all over. The difficult thing is accepting that things she kept for over sixty years because they were significant might well get buried in the skip. Some of it was my Nan's, and very interesting, but as Steve said yesterday: " What you have to consider is, if you keep it, what will your children make of it when you die."

That's quite enough for a sunny day, so I'm signing off and going to sit in the garden on Mum's reclining chair with my Creative Gardening book and a cup of tea.

Couldn't resist putting this on. Nearly two weeks ago I said I hadn't managed to photograph the chldren in the camp shower, but no such problem with Gramps. It has been a lovely day, and Dave has worked really hard laying slabs. He changed into swimming shorts, brought his shower gel and got ready for his curry night out in the gazebo.

We've worked really hard today and I am disappointed with this photo. The trouble with photos is that they don't convey the image you have in your head of how it is all going to be when seeds sprout and leaves grow to fill in the spaces and soften the hard edges. I've sprinkled clarkia, godetia and cottage mixture this afternoon after the hard graft of digging and humping soil. In my head the carpet of flowers is already there, but in the photo I have to admit it doesn't really look a lot different to the last picture I posted.

We have a huge skip on the lawn at the front, and Dave spent his afternoon barrowing rubble and subsoil into it. We have a man coming on Monday afternoon whose job is setting up memory rooms in old people's homes and day centres. He has offered to buy quite a lot of Dot and Rod's stuff and we are hoping he will be interested in some of Mum's. It's different from trying to sell things as antiques, because the things he wants are the things that trigger off memories of the youth of people who are now in their eighties and nineties. We are hoping to offload a dozen pairs of spectacles, ranging from round ones with stretchy sides to coloured winged ones from the fifties! There are old driving licences, various tins - Oxo, Huntley and Palmers biscuits, toffees - tin trunks, lace fichus, paper patterns from the '40s, dressing table sets and so on. Well, we shall see.

Tomorrow we are going with Dot and Rod to Peter Beales roses at Attleborough. We are planning to dismatle our herb garden which has become very overgrown and full of bindweed and self-set comfrey. The idea is to level the ground, lay a weed-proof membrane and plant roses through it, then lay slate chips between. We have found slate chips very pleasant and easy to weed, as they don't break your nails to bits like gravel and they get lovely and warm to kneel on! Anyway, the idea of going to Peter Beales is to inspire Dave with their stunning displays. June should be a good time to go as the climbers and ramblers will be at their best. It will allow us to make lists of what we want, and ideas about trellises and arches. That's an autumn job as the bare-root plants are cheaper than pot-grown, and it means we can have another trip to the rose-gardens when the present works are complete.

We are really missing the family. All we have now is the odd tiny sock, a pirate's cutlass, story-books in our bed and various baking tins and kitchen utensils coated with damp sand. And of course lovely memories, snippets of nonsense songs and repartee, and a sort of smile around the house - 'Gramps' and Grandma's house.' Roll on the Birthday weekend!

We had the grandchildren all to ourselves today while Mary-Ann and Dom went to the Good Food show at the NEC. It was a bit scary but actually we had a lovely time. It was an honour and pleasure to have them for Joe's third birhday. We took them to church this morning for the first part of the service, and they were amazingly good. James made friends with the couple in the pew behind us and was given the man's spectacle case which he proceeded to chew until it was thoroughly wet. Joe loved the music and clapping (we are happy clappy) and when it got to the baptism which was total immersion he wanted to be next!

While James had his sleep we played with Joe in the new sand-pit. It has been a great success although we are glad there were two bags of left-over sand because quite a bit has finished up in the spaces between the new paving slabs. When James got up we went down to the summer house and Joe opened his tool-kit from Uncle Joe and Auntie Sally and his Thomas engines and tracks from us.

Dot and Rod came to sing Happy Birthday and have a slice of chocolate birthday cake. We played down there for the rest of the afternoon, then had a BBQ. James tucked into sausage and burger like a seasoned Basketts, but couldn't resist helping himself to my potato salad.

We finished off with a solar shower for the boys. There would have been a picture of this spectacular event, but I had not anticipated how difficult it was to shower two little boys outside, one of whom cannot stand, and take pictures as well. Needless to say, I didn't!

Mary-Ann and Dom were home in time to put the children to bed. A successful day all round.

This is not a pretty picture but there is a lot of information in it. The new stream is in the background with the bridge over it, newly painted but already decorated by passing pigeons. In the foreground is a large hole where we have just succeed in digging out the old bog garden. The liner is at the start of the bridge, next to a large pot of irises which had to be dug out. Soil is piled up all round the hole and you can see the layer of sand that was under the liner. The yellow bucket is one third full of bindweed roots which were in the layer of sand. The ant-stop on the bridge tells its own story. We are both broken yet again, and were glad to leave it all and go for a hair-cut. We nearly went to sleep by the time Maxine had finished. We are getting quite excited now, and our motivation exceeds our stamina every day. Will it be done in time for the summer BBQ? It might, if we hadn't also got to empty the mobile home and get it demolished, sort out the blue bedroom where we dumped all the furniture from the annexe bedroom when we transferred all Joe and Sally's furniture down there. We had been hoping to get the damp plaster in the blue room sorted and decorated before we put the room to rights but might well have to do a temporary job. Life is never boring!

The built-in sand-pit for the boys is made, but I'll post a picture of that when we have slabbed all round it and it doesn't look as if we've left an oblong of decking lying around!

Well that didn't work either. Anyway, we had a lovely time in Exeter. The weather was wonderful and we were able to walk to the park regularly, as well as do some gardening, have a BBQ and sit about in the sun watching the children and eating and drinking. We had a memorable visit to the seafront playground at Teignmouth where there is a large water area with loads of little springs and fountains coming out of the ground. So much more fun than a paddling pool. The children were going straight to a family birthday party so a quick trip to Tesco's was called for. More new pants! (Mr Men, Joe was delighted.)

We had fantastic flights, just over an hour each way and no hold luggage to wait for as we got enough for 3 days in our cabin bags. They took my contact lens solution off me because I had saved about 50mls in the bottom of an original container. Apparently it's the container that mustn't be more than 100mls capacity! So we saved £7.50 and some time by not having a suitcase, but it cost me £7 to replace my solution. You learn as you get older, but there's always something else.

No Rachel, we didn't make a mud-pit I am very glad to say, but we did have a go at a ridiculous curved strip of garden half-way down the lawn. When we tried to dig it over we realised why it was there - huge tree roots sticking up proud of the lawn. It would be impossible to mow over it, so some inventive pre-owner had put rocks round the roots and topped up with soil. It was very dry under the canopy of the tree, which is growing in waste-land next door. We'll see how it gets on with a layer of bark chippings and a few choice specimens. They'll need very regular watering.

Hooray, I moved the picture. YOu have to press shift. This has made my morning.

Having terrible troubles posting this morning. First of all Blogger was unavailable, then I tried ruth's tips for getting my photos where I wanted but couldn't make it work. So I tried to post a very untidy looking page and it didn't publish for ages, then told me it had but in fact it hadn't so I have lost it. Chat isn't working on my laptop either so I am having to sit in the office. Using Edit Html this time. Haven't clue what it means but Ruth seems to know!

Dave finished securing the hose reel to the wall, and Joe very quickly discovered how to squeeze the sprayer. It is taking longer for him to work out how to turn on the water supply. After twiddling every knob and handle on the hose reel he found the brass tap on the wall, but couldn't quite turn it. It's only a matter of time. Try a spanner Joe!