It’s built!
Photos will come later as the camera batteries have run out. It’s a lovely clean expanse of wood with a large landing-type step up to it so that R won’t have trouble. It’s beautiful.
It provides the illusion of bringing the garden towards the house. It means I can walk straight into the potting shed where the washer / dryer and the vegetable bins are without climbing two steps. There’s loads of space for plants and R’s toys. The hanging basket hook has ended up being about three feet off the ground - perfect for R, as I intend to grow some hanging basket tomatoes next summer for him to enjoy. It is the perfect place to sit with a drink and survey the ancestral acres….
I have the perfect large pot in which to grow a tree - I’m thinking of what to choose now. Perhaps an amalanchier or a liquidambar. Perhaps a cloud pine. It’s quite shaded although it’s bright on the deck, so evergreens would work well.
I haven’t been interested in the garden for a long while now, the results of which are painfully obvious to me when I so much as step outside the door. Various issues in my life have diverted me from it. It is strangling itself quietly, expiring in front of my eyes, ticking and driving forward on rusty wheels under the power that I set in motion but which has gone undirected since - chaos ensues. I am waiting to engage with it until the Autumn, when the vitality will have died back and I can get Dave, my garden and tree man, to come and give me a hand. Then, at least, I may havea fighting chance at regenerating the ravaged Diana that lurks behind my house.
Oh, and don’t get me started about my window boxes. What goes for the garden goes double for them.
It sounds heavenly. And I always think a perfect garden is a sign of incipient madness, so the fact that you’ve had to let it do its own thing for a bit due to other pressures is no bad thing. An Autumnal tart-up and all will be well.
And for the tree in a pot - I’d go for an evergreen, maybe something with berries for the winter birdies?
I think you’re right. I’ve got some partridgeberry bushes, in pots, but R eats the berries or tries to and I never know if they’re poisonous. Maybe I’ll stick to box and dwarf conifers and grasses, and put up a birdfeeder!