Day one was actually just half a day as Seb and Joe, my amazing builders, arrived at 1 ish. However they achieved millions in the four hours or so they were at work. First they set about demolishing a whole shed, scaring away many spiders in the process (including some fearsome and large False Widow spiders)

I may re-use the shed panels as fence panels as they are in good condition. As my back neighbours have an impressive collection of dead fridges and lawnmower a in their garden it may be nice to put up a proper fence!

Then collectively we cleared the ground, I was pulling up the remaining sticks an roots of the Kerria Japonica that had spread like crazy whilst poor Joe was hacking away at the stump of the Mahonia that until last week had been a good 2.5 high and about 3m wide! More spiders were relocated in the process 😉

Materials were ordered, tea was drunk, funny stories exchanged and all of that in gorgeous sunshine. By 5ish the boundary of the studio was roughly marked out and cleared and I watched the sun set over a garden filled with rubble sacks full of ivy, brambles and bits of shrub. I pulled up some more nasty bindweed roots and finally stopped for the day.

Here’s some pictures of what it looked like last night: