i never promised you a herb garden

It's now over a year since the Night Of The Long Shears and (a bit of weeding aside) we haven't really done much with the garden beyond occasionally sitting in it eating barbecued food and necking wine (not that there's anything wrong with that). So, inspired by another visit from my parents on Monday, we set about tidying things up a bit. Here's a couple of views of the state of play before we started:


- and here's how things looked after a bit of frenzied pruning, some digging out of rubble and a trip down to our local B&Q to pick up a few plants and some compost.


The stuff that my glamorous assistant is watering is our new herb patch, which I'm hopeful will survive without being chomped down to the ground by slugs. We'll have to wait and see. Unfortunately my ruthless pruning of the privet bush in the picture(s) on the left exposed a blackbird nest (with some chicks in it) to the elements, and I think the parents may have abandoned it. Which is a shame, obviously, but I'm not going to get all maudlin about it. The blackbird is not exactly an endangered species, after all, and I'm confident Mr. & Mrs. Blackbird would agree that the wholesale slaughter of their offspring is a small price to pay for me to have some nice herbs to put on my dinner.