Almost done

The landscapers cracked on.

The planter received its coping slabs and the patio was completed. All the pointing was done. It's turning out even better than we had hoped.

The lads are pretty sure that will be finished by close of play on Monday, and the skip, which is still sitting proudly on our drive, will probably go on Tuesday.

Once the Gorse Fox is certain of the timing he will order the wood for the decking. (He needs to make sure he has somewhere for the wood to be stored until it is used... and that will probably take a week or two, at least)

The Gorse Fox also made a trip to Screwfix to pick up the remainder of the coach screws, and fixings which were not available yesterday. He also had a bit of an Eureka! moment, when it dawned on him how much sawdust was about to be created. He bought a cheap workshop vacuum cleaner that he hopes to connect to the exhaust port of the saw in order to capture the sawdust as it is created. Time will tell if this works or not.

The Jane and Trevor arrived late in the afternoon. He had been visiting a client on the South coast and we had arranged for them to swing by on the route home. It was lovely to see them, as always. Among the gifts that Jane was clutching was a box full of old family photos. Many of these the Gorse Fox had never seen before - and, indeed, many he was in (but only remembers some of them). Come the winter, the Gorse Fox's scanner will be working hard, he suspects. All of these need to be captured, dated, and identified for the future.

After a chat and some tea and scones we wandered round the emerging garden to explain what was going on then we all headed out to a nearby restaurant of supper. The restaurant itself was lovely, but the food was, at best, average. The Gorse Fox is not sure that we will return.