Birthday presents that cost nothing but time!

I am an occasional watcher of gardner's world and have often dreamed of having an army of helpers to prepare my soil like Monty Don clearly has.  Now I can't afford that, so this year as my birthday approached and I got the usual queries "what would you like?" I said to family, please please instead of presents could you all come and help in my garden.  Some members said oh we still want to give you something and I replied no, what  you don't realise is I do really want you to work not just sit around chatting.

So the day dawned on Saturday not with the best weather forecast but not complete disaster.

First get the children sorted:  they chose the patio  weeding, with extra incentive of barbeque sausages in the evening.  What a    fab result!  (sorry no "before" photos I took all of these the next day on saturday too busy working)

They did extra work (without any prompting) of cutting a path out of the back of the garden to the fields behind our garden.

My youngest sister, who had rashly put a "head gardner" voucher in her birthday card to me, was given the job (needless to say no one else applied) and she headed the group working on vegetable garden at the  front of the house.  Now, not completely weed free but that is not really my style.    The paths are a bit of a nightmare, when we moved here 10years ago we brought with us a stash of old bricks (it is a long story which i will not bore you with) with which I got same sister's partner to layout this garden.  At the time I had romantic visions of creeping thyme between the bricks and so shunned idea of concrete inbetween the bricks.  Oh how I have cursed that, as repeatedly scrapping dandelions, bindweed, shepherds purse etc out of the spaces between the bricks.  The creeping thyme I had tried to establish long since taken off to more hospitable parts of garden.

Last year this plum tree had grown so much and was so laden with fruit that due to lack of any support it broke and half was lost to my lack of organisation.  Following Saturday it has a network that it will be lucky to reach in ten years (but if it goes on raining like this it might get to the top sooner).  Other wires were put up and repaired in various places so now do need to do the tying in.

Do I have the coldest garden in east anglia? the very first asparagus shoots coming up on 10th May benefited from the head gardener's sort out of compost bins.

This might not look that great but it shields the plastic oil tank and can be decorated in time and cost nothing being two old garage doors that had been salvaged.

The only problem being that the rain came pouring down so sausages had to be cooked in kitchen.  After a festive supper we braved the rain to go an look for  badger which we have been saying we would do for the last two years.  Despite the doom of my mother- the badgers will never come out in this etc, it turned out one of them was as mad as us.  No photo as would have needed under water camera to take shot.  The badger had clearly decided that it was too wet and was making a dash for warm burrow.  Fabulous end to a lovely day.