We have been home from the Bahamas for six weeks now and made significant inroads into the house and garden refurbishment. The garden project has been the most challenging as all the work has been 'heavy'. I now have aches in places I didn't even know I had places but the result has been worth the effort.


We have turned this .....





into this......





Doing the garden has been a 'We' thing. We both have specific and different roles to play, Christine is in the planning and design department and I'm in the mix that concrete, move that stone section. The result is that I have lost nearly a stone in weight and my arms no longer work but on the bright side Christine gets the plaudits from visitors because of how nice it all looks. But it does look good so that's fine.


As you will know, before retirement I was a project manager and a major tool in my day to day tasks was the Black Book, this being the book in which jobs were listed, plans were written up, meeting notes entered and decisions recorded. You will also know that I have tried in vain to introduce Christine to the book to help with planning and design. Christine's view is that design evolves, you do one part and that leads to the next and so on and if you don't like one bit then you change it until it's right. Another way of looking at this is 'trial and error' and we do this quite a lot. Paint a room a colour, if we don't like it we paint the room again a different colour. I can say with certainty that I have never not liked the first colour in any room.


Certainly trial and error in the garden has taken place, that Yorke stone patio outside the kitchen doubled in size after I had finished the first attempt. The path down to garden room was narrower and eighteen inches to the left when I first laid it but as I said now that we can see the whole thing, thanks to Christine's evolving design, it does look good.


I am now having a couple of days off from heavy work to let my arms and back recover whilst Christine puts in the finishing touches. Then all we need to do is redecorate every room in the house, whoopee. The garden at the back of the house hasn't even got onto the black book yet, that's a next years project. Who said retirement meant taking it easy?