In the beginning....there was a hole..

in the lawn that is. This was courtesy of a bonfire we had on November 5th 2010. To say the boys got a little carried away would be understating the case. I did mention Minion 1's penchant for setting fire to things....

Exhibit A...scary, isn't it...

That said, Charlie's not much better. I'm not sure what it is about men and fire. It must hark back to our days in the cave. Man make fire...Man get food! Anyway, after this particular bonfire our lawn looked like this:

This was the beginning...quite a blank canvas really. So, what we started with was an 100 ft long garden surrounded by beech hedges. There is an apple tree and a large Cotinus Coggygria at the end of the long bed and a strawberry bed separating a section at the back of the garden. The soil is very heavy clay and can get surface flooding in heavy rain.  In April - June 2010  we spent our time tidying up the garden and sewed runner beans, purple sprouting broccoli, courgettes, aubergines, pumpkin and sweetcorn (see pics below). 

So we had made a start, but we wanted more than just veg...we wanted fresh eggs, and that meant chickens...