One step at a time

The snow was back Sunday morning.
But I still have a tree to plant in stinky dog corner.
But I've got more structural work to do before it goes in, & that's going to take all day.
But it is quite literally baltic out there...

I bought the tree last weekend & it has already fallen over in its pot once, when the wind got up midweek. Fortunately it isn't damaged, but I do this all the time: buy something expensive & leaving it lying around neglected/rotting/dying.

But today is not that day.

Grasping at a very short straw (that it was very sunny for about 30 mins between the very brief snow showers), I decided to Carpe the damn Diem & get out there.

A quick jaunt to B&Q, filling up the passenger seat of little car with "rustic sleepers", then back to the ranch to use them as steps of the grand dog corner terracing plan.

An editorial aside: As (for me) this blog is about playing with blogging tech as well as gardening, I'm now going to try something new. Those waiting since the New Year for Japan posts will know that I'm struggling with a content backlog, so I'm wondering if a format change might help. For this post I'm going to try intro - piccies - outro, with all the explanation in the picture captions. I'd love to know what you think.

1st things 1st: Finish clearing the rest of the weeds from stinky dog corner.
All systemic weeds though so they're not going into my compost heap;
they'll go into the Council compost bin instead.

That's not vermiculite & meteors. That's snow.
I think my face has frozen.

Straight down the centre line:
I've still got the centre point pegged out from last year's path laying,
& the steps will respect that arc.

So, how far apart should they be?
A bit of shuffling the sleepers, measuring, & marking with bamboo pegs.

Cutting the steps out of the top soil.
A bit of level checking at this point too, so I'm at least in the ball park.

Weed barrier fabric laid in overlapping sections, with bamboo rails to
help keep the corners tight. Hopefully, by not using just a single run of
fabric from top to bottom, I'll reduce the risk of movement across the
whole run.

The sleepers placed on a bed of sand, levelled left to right, but with a slight tilt
backwards. The sleepers are not pegged down in anyway as this won't be a high
traffic area... I might revisit this decision if things start shifting though.

The rest of the fabric is covered with sand.
There'll be more gravel once I've nipped back to B&Q.

As you can see, there's more work to do: the rest of the terracing needs to go in. Then planting to soften the edges, maybe some low-lying things in gravel &, oh yes, plant the feckin' tree... still didn't manage that. But I was chuffed with my afternoon's work, and my ability not to trip up or stab myself while trying to think with an ice cube brain. & I learnt that it is waaaaaay easier to keep going than it is to get started.

So that's the end of the post - please add a comment to let me know what you think of this format. Thanks! :)