The gardeners were here again yesterday to give our garden its last major push towards completion.
The chief task yesterday was to install the lighting. We’ve had small lights placed in the wooden steps that lead from the kitchen door to the patio, plus larger lights around the patio and along the path towards the gate.
We had to wait for it to go dark yesterday in order to appreciate the effect, but it was nice and conferred the atmosphere we were looking for.
The lighting in question is 12V LED lighting, so it doesn’t use a lot of power. We have it connected to a twilight sensor, so that it turns on automatically after sunset. You can control how long it stays on after that.
We’re still waiting for a couple of spotlights to be placed at the base of two of our trees, which will further add to the atmosphere. Those are 220V, so I’ll need a qualified electrician to place those.
Eloïse now has some tree bark at the foot of her climbing frame’s ladder, so she can now climb the ladder without having to tread in soil. She could already go up using the rope slope, but now she has the option of the ladder, too. A sprinkler head near the foot of the ladder was moved out of the way today and should be more effective now.
The remainder of the plants have been placed, too. There may still be one more plant to place; I’m not sure; but things are starting to look finished now.
In the evening, our Unopiù garden furniture arrived on the back of a very large lorry from Germany. The delivery men didn’t speak a word of English, so I had to haul my notoriously bad bisschen Deutsch out of the mothballs.
The lorry had spent some seven hours on the road en route from Bad Kissingen and didn’t arrive until 19:30. I had begun to doubt whether I had properly understood the German phone conversation the day before when we were arranging the drop-off.
Anyway, the old garden furniture has now made way for the new stuff, consisting of a large teak table, eight chairs and a very large rectangular parasol. The spokes of the parasol are so long that it can’t be fully closed, so we may end up exchanging it for the circular model, but it looks lovely when open.
Eloïse was very excited by the new furniture when she came down this morning and has been keen to eat all of her meals out there today.
Now we just need a few guests to come over and enjoy the patio with us. The weather is set to continue getting warmer and I just hope it’s still good when Tony and Bernie get here next month.