A few visitors

Our garden may still be a bland space, but it's attracting lots of visitors.

First up was next door's dog who managed to find a gap in the fence and take the opportunity to have a mad run around. However, he then made a dash for the front (we don't have a side gate yet) and straight for the road - followed in hot pursuit by our neighbour. Chicken wire seems to have solved the problem for now.

There's no keeping out the neighbourhood cats however - we've counted 5 regular visitors already. And this doesn't include our own, Freddie, who has been staying tucked up indoors while he gets used to his new home.

We've had a few squirrels, but so far birds have been limited mostly to wood pigeons and magpies. I have seen a pair of coal tits and there are other birds around. However, without binoculars, my eyesight hasn't managed to identify anything small with confidence.

Then, the other morning we were greeted by this fox

who had a good sniff around before wandering into the next garden.

Can't wait to see how much more wildlife we attract when we actually start growing things.

Help is at Hand

It's now 3 weeks since we moved in and I have to admit that the only thing we've done in the garden so far is to mend the fence panel which came down in the high winds and put up a rather ugly, but necessary, storage unit.

But I have taken the opportunity to take a closer look at the garden and discover some of its quirks. For starters, it's not as flat as I first thought. And the lawn is distinctly lumpy - so no chance of practising my golf putt (OK, that was pretty unlikely, even if it had been Augusta standard). We'll have to wait to see how it grows once the weather finally warms up, but any areas we decide to keep as lawn may well need replacing anyway.

Secondly, only a small area will be sunny throughout the day. The house and relatively high fences plus the mature trees in the surrounding gardens means that most areas will be shady. So I'm unlikely to have much choice in the position of the sunny patio I have in mind.

And I still have no idea where I'm going to put the shed.

All rather daunting.

Then I spotted an advert for a garden design course run by Fat Grass Garden Design - 6 weeks learning to plan your own garden. Perfect! Not only does it cover all the things I want to know but it's being held just down the road and starts in a couple of weeks.

So all decision making is on hold and I can spend the next couple of weeks thinking about the elements I want to include without worrying about practicalities.