Preparing the garden for winter Part 2 - but not quite according to plan

We had a nasty surprise when we began clearing out the raised beds this week.  This is what we discovered:

ans a bit of digging revealed this:

Our raised beds are falling to pieces, quite simply rotting away.  :((

Serious and drastic action was required.  

The soil has all been dug out and bagged up.

There then followed a lot of standing around, hands on hips, surveying the garden.  Lots of "how about this?", and "what it we tried that?"; measuring out with tapes and garden canes; lots of grimacing and scratching of heads.  Finally, after much deliberation and scribbling of designs on a spare page of the puzzle book that lives in the shed, we arrived at a decision.  We are going to replace the two beds by the fence with three beds orientated the other way.  It will almost double our growing area and certainly make far better use of the space we have.  This was one of the things we were keen to do when we made the decision to take the flat off the market in early summer - optimise the space in the garden.  However, we have also realised that this revamp is not going to happen over-night, and we will be reconstructing the beds over the course of the winter.

Yesterday we had a mooch around a local demolition/salvage yard and found some wood which should be ideal for rebuilding the beds.  More measuring and calculating followed, but by using reclaimed timber rather than new, we should save ourselves about half the cost of new timber.  So that is the job for next week (among several other things, as usual), building the first of our new raised beds.

We are under a bit of pressure to get started with the garden as the seedlings we bought from the nursery before we went away are in our greenhouse and growing daily.  Two trays of winter greens (on the left), Brussels sprouts at the back and purple sprouting broccoli front right.  

We've managed to get a couple of sprouting apple pips to germinate and grow:

We noticed the sprouting pips in some apples we had before we went on holiday, and I was intrigued to see if they would actually continue to grow if they were planted - 2 out of the 6 did.  Not sure how they will fare over the winter, or if we can nurture them along, but it will be interesting to see.

We've noticed a big change in the weather since we came back from Greece.  The temperatures have dropped noticeably, and the evenings are pulling in - we're having to put a light on by 7 o'clock as dusk approaches.  We'll have to get used to shorter days again, and make plans to keep busy indoors as well as outside.  I have a long list of inside jobs that need to be tackled, so I think I shall probably be OK  ;)  N admits that he finds winter a difficult season.  He always thought it was the cold that he found hard to deal with, but he now feels that the problem is probably more to do with not being able to get outside so much.  We've both really enjoyed being in the garden and out walking so much this summer, and we need to look at ways of spending time in the open during the autumn and winter.  It takes a bit more effort when the weather isn't sunny and warm, but there's nothing to stop us going out for a walk if it's cold, although I'd probably think twice if it was pouring with rain!

Tomorrow is Sunday and I shall try to reinstate 'screen-free Sunday' - my resolve to avoid using the laptop one day a week slipped a little in the summer.  N and I are off on a major expedition tomorrow, all the way to the bright lights of London for a get-together with my children.  Maps at the ready; mobile numbers have been exchanged should we get lost!  Country bumpkins let loose in London, wish us luck!!