The back lawn

We've put a huge effort in during the last couple of weeks clearing the lawn and preparing for it to be turfed. The turf arrived this morning and although we were nearly ready for it we still had a lot of soil to shift before we could put the turf down. By the time we were ready for the turf it was already pouring with rain, but we both wanted to get on with it so we stayed outside. William gave us more support in the rain for around 15 minutes and then decided that we were crazy and came indoors.

This is the garden 6 weeks ago on an equally miserable day:



After the gravel had been removed and the old grass cleared:



Yesterday, Ian having dug over the soil in an attempt to level it:



This evening we removed all the large pieces of clay and then raked it over, but it was too wet at that point to get a photo. This is how it looked when the ground finally got too soggy to continue:



At least we don't have to water it tonight.

Funny pictures

Some of these are absolutely hilarious...

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Thanks to Jeremy at the Garden Pond Blog for the link.

Follow the yellow brick road

We've spent a lot of time deciding what the paths in our garden should be made of. We've considered grass, decking boards, bark, gravel, slate and stone. Finally we made a decision for the path that goes round the back of the pond - yellow bricks. Today Ian helped me remove the rest of the grass and then I started to lay the bricks. They're a little bit wobbly as I haven't found anything to push the soil down the cracks between them yet, but I think it's going to be a lovely path.

Country Music

Ever since I first watched the annual country music awards in the mid 1990s I've been a big fan of modern country music. I only manage to catch the awards show on television every 2 or 3 years, but until now it has been my main source of information on new artists. When I see new artists, most of them were born in the 60's and 70's and have been singing for a couple of decades, but they're very rarely mentioned over here in the UK.

My favourite country artists to date are Martina McBride, Trisha Yearwood, LeAnn Rimes, Carrie Underwood, the Dixie Chicks, Tim McGraw, Chely Wright and Jessica Andrews.

In the past I have subscribed to various music sites so that I could try new music and play albums that I don't own. Having recently cancelled my subscription I had a look around and found last.fm - a wonderful free site for playing music. You can type in your favourite artist and then get a constant stream of songs by similar artists. This has been wonderful for my country music education and already I have found some new artists that I really like - Deana Carter, Jo dee messina, Lila McCann, Blake Shelton & Julie Roberts.

I'd definitely recommend trying last.fm and for anyone interested in country music the film Walk the Line is a must-see.

At The Willows

Ian and I visited the Willows on Easter Sunday.

Every Easter I visit my father and he assures me that he will be able to find me a frog in his garden. Until now the frogs have all chosen to vanish when I appeared. This time I was lucky...



The cherry tree in the front garden is absolutely beautiful

In the country lanes

Although the land we viewed a few days ago turned out to be too far away the trip was made worthwhile by a pair of pheasants by the roadside

English nature reserves

I have a request for those of you who visit UK nature reserves...

I'm making a web application - basically a map of England showing the location of all nature reserves. Rather than just having a marker pointing to a random location within the reserve I'm aiming to actually draw on their boundaries. The project will be helpful for developing my GIS skills and should be a useful output on a webpage in the future. In the past I've had a lot of trouble 1) finding individual nature reserves (particularly those without any sort of signs within the reserve itself) and 2) knowing when I'm within their boundaries.

There are a number of ways to determine their boundaries - existing maps and websites, books, emails to the organisations that run them or people who know them well etc. Some nature reserves even have signs showing aerial maps like the two below. These can be very detailed and accurate or just an outline. If anyone has any photos of signs like these I'd really appreciate them sending them to me. Also if you happen to visit any in the future (it doesn't have to be the near future) I'd appreciate you grabbing a photo.





Although I'd be interested in extending this in the future I am only currently planning to include actual nature reserves, rather than country parks or other regions of the countryside. I've no idea how many there are in the UK - in the south west there are 40 owned by Devon Wildlife Trust, 55 owned by Cornwall Wildlife Trust and a number of others owned by the National Trust, RSPB etc.

In addition to photos of signs if anyone can think of any nature reserves that I'm unlikely to know about - ones that are privately owned or not owned by one of the usual organisations I'd appreciate you telling me about them.

A big thank you to you all in advance for this (especially to my father who will no doubt end up rooting through folders and folders of photos).