The Start of a Garden

Blimey what a day! Wall to wall sunshine, and warm!! It has felt not like spring today, but summer definitely. My Dad and step Mum and Brother are all visiting this week - my Dad lives in the US so hadn't met Ivy yet, so this is a very special visit. We had a lovely walk this morning up the hill behind our house and admired the view, but really today has been all about the garden. At lunch we brought a big picnic out and tested out my new picnic area (!!!), and then sat in the sun a while. Even Ivy had to be stripped down as she was going a bit pink.
Not much new this week except I have spent lots of time in the garden, behold the transformation:

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It's a garden!!
The beans and onions are in as well as a lot of bulbs. I had a whole tonne of seeds to plant as well as a few shrubs but will need a little more compost first. The little walled picnic area is coming along - I have planted the blueberry and a small cherry blossom but would like another cherry blossom and a may tree as well. This will also be planted all around with flower seeds and shrubs (when I have some!) I even mowed the lawn today while Ivy played on a rug. We have a manual push mower, and I love it! We haven't had a lawn for a couple of years, so it was a joy bringing it out again for the first time!
I made a small crazy paving path with rubble collected around the garden and filled in with sand and grit, also found in the garden. After a few good rains I will fill in with more sand, and repeat until it feels firm enough. There is so much building materials and rubble in the garden that we will not need to buy anything like that. All of the bricks for my wall and the borders have been collected from the garden and there are dozens more. We've given away most of out gravel on freecycle but kept some back for digging into the soil to improve drainage, and for any other paths we may want to make. All of out plants have been either kept from previous gardens, given to us, or bought from the 'nearly dead, buy me!' section at garden centres. I only hope it continues to be such a cheap and fulfilling project!
Anyway, time to go, Ivy is everywhere. Some more snaps of the garden on this glorious day!