the last of the bulk bag

I finally finished spreading the contents of the bulk bag of gravel that's been sitting in the drive for months.  I ordered two, thinking I'd need that much and it would save on the aggravation of having it delivered to get a couple in one go, but ended up taking a very long time to empty the second.  It was destined for the railway garden and the small exotic dry garden near the entrance, meaning that every shovel full had to be pushed half way round the front garden barrow load by laborious barrow load, and there was no point in spreading it on top of the weeds, meaning that every square foot of gravel I topped up had to be weeded first.  My feeling of triumph, as I tipped the last fragments out of the bulk bag and bundled it up out of sight were considerable.

The layout of the front garden is fundamentally wrong.  I can see this now, without possessing the will or the finances to do anything about it.  With the benefit of hindsight we should have done several things differently.  We should have arranged to screen the parked cars and my greenhouse from the rest of the front garden, and we should have provided an area for bulk materials for the garden to be delivered where they could sit out of sight until needed.  Neither would have been easy, since we are at the end of a single track lane so that all traffic has to go out the way it came in, and there was not that much width in the garden beyond the existing turning circle.

Anyway, it's too late now, but it means that all the time you are looking at the planting in the front garden, some of which is quite good, and the miniature railway, which is quite amusing, you are also aware of our cars, your car, my dilapidated working greenhouse complete with shading paint and non-matching replacement panes in the roof, a pile of as yet unused Strulch, the stash of propagated plants outside the greenhouse, next season's tulip or dahlia pots growing on until ready to go out on display, and any bags of gravel.  All of these things should have been tidied away behind a wall or a hedge, only we did not realise that at the outset.  Fixing it now would require a wholesale clearance of sheds, greenhouse, borders and railway, and major investment in hardcore and concrete, and is not going to happen.

It's left me buying mushroom compost by the bag full when it would be quicker and cheaper to have it dumped by the load: there is nowhere to dump it.  Or at least, we could have it tipped on to the concrete in front of the greenhouse, right by the drive, but the thought of looking out of the kitchen window at a heap of ordure for weeks or months until I managed to spread all of it on the borders is deeply unappealing.  It's just taken me months to use up half a bulk bag of gravel, so whose to say how long it could take to spread an entire lorry load of manure, if the weather was unhelpful or I wasn't well.

I toyed with the idea of ordering another bag of gravel for the railway, but I think that for now I'll stick to skimming some from the drive where it's built up into thick patches.