Wall [without logs]

We arrived at the house for Christmas and noticed that M. Milesi had started the new wall.  He'd removed all of the traces of the one that had been falling down for years.

It was a lovely wall, but we were terrified that one day it would fall on someone - not something we wanted on our consciences.

An upside of replacing it will be that I will no longer be nervous about weeding the garden near to the wall [in case my activities were what precipitated its collapse].

The footings were laid, and then we had a massive hiatus before the wall went up, owing to the cold, wet winter.

As we couldn't garden anyway, it didn't matter to us, but did leave us a bit nervous that yet another workman had started a job only to abandon it before finishing [I would say "once bitten, twice shy", but it's been more like a swarm of mosquitoes than a simple learning opportunity!].

So it was great to see a wall there when we went in March.

The last time we visited the house (a couple of weeks ago), the spoil had been [mostly] put back into the trench, and we had an invoice awaiting us in the letter box, so we know his work here is done.

The wall looks great: not pretty like the old one, but it matches Philippe's wall , so I think it works very well.

And David started going over the ground to shovel all the remaining subsoil into the gap.  Rain stopped play, but we're not far from finished.  Then we plan to relocate the compost piles to the gap to let it work its magic & fill up the gap.

We can't plant now until the autumn or next spring [in case the weather does finally turn "normal" for the time of year], so it should give us a good bed to plant into.

Now we just need to remove the unwanted elderberry bushes [I intend to plant "Red Lace" instead - lower down the bank, so not as visually intrusive, and with prettier leaves & flowers, but hopefully it will berry up OK]...