It’s finally here, almost two months later than we planned, the weather allowed us to buy gravel and start finishing the steps and side garden. Initially, we planned to finish around the beginning of April and use the second terrace for seedlings and pots, but since the weather was very poor in March and the soil was a bit late, we didn’t manage to get the gravel before the beginning of May. Last Friday we got a delivery of crushed dolomite stones. I insisted on buying dolomite since I thought it would look better in the garden than the rest of the available stones. The dolomite is mostly white and in combination with green plants and bed boards it should look very nice.

Of course, the weather had to mess with us, so I decided, while hubby was at work, to shovel all the gravel into one pile and secure it with old side panels. This way we can close the yard doors, and Srećko can run around the yard without the need to be closed on the balcony. Hubby can work when he has time, and there’s no rush to finish.

The weekend has been rainy, and there hasn’t been much work done, so hubby used every afternoon during this week to try and do as much work as he could. First, he finished fixing the garden entrance which he built last year. The old entrance was very steep and very slippery when there was rain or dew, which is almost all the time. Last year he made a small support wall, added soil to flatten the surface, and build an improvised board fence for Srećko to stop him from escaping. Now that the gravel is here he filled the area with gravel to secure the soil even more. Although the surface is now much flatter, it’s still on a downhill area, and it’s still slippery during rainy periods. Gravel should stop us from slipping and falling. The steep part upper part wasn’t covered in gravel since there’s no point in doing this. The rain will wash down the stones right away, and this way we can at least trim the grass without getting hit in the face.

He also made new steps for me to enter the garden more easily. Two years ago he build the steps inside the garden, last year he built steps from the house to the flattened area, and yesterday he finished the 3 steps that are at the gate between the hill and the garden entrance. Now I have steps all the way from the house to the garden beds, which will help me a lot. It’s hard to move down the steep garden, especially when you carry something. There are 28 steps from the house to the garden, and that’s not including the side steps that are still not finished, which clearly shows how steep my yard is. Once everything is finished it will be easier to move around the yard and do everyday work.

Once the garden entrance was finished, hubby moved to fix the backyard and the basement entrance. The old basement entrance was made with a concrete slab which was very poorly connected to the house and with time, due to the soil subsidence over the years, the slab started slowly sinking and moving down the hill. Hubby secured it with metal poles before building an onion/lettuce bed, but it still looked very badly. Since there is no way to get any heavy machinery in the backyard to lift the slab there were just a few choices we could do: break the slab into pieces, pour new concrete on top, or hide it in some way.

I was against the new layer of concrete. The house is already full of concrete and I don’t want more in the garden. Since we made the new beds from the old, junk wood, that was left after the demolition, I suggested we hide the slab with gravel. I told my hubby to build a small wall out of the boards all around the slab and cover the whole area with gravel so that after the work nobody would even know there was concrete under the area. Hubby filled the holes with leftover building materials, and boy we do have lots of those, and covered the slab with gravel. I was sure it would look good, but I had no idea it would look this good. In the combination with the old boards, some are over 100 years old, the gravel looks excellent. The whole backyard looks really good now. We still need to change the basement/workshop doors and do some more fixing up of the area but it already looks much better. Even Srećko likes the new backyard.

Hopefully, the side yard will look as good once it’s finished. There’s still a lot to be done, but now finally it’s starting to look like a real garden.