We've a south-facing sun trap formed by the kitchen wall, garage extension, and the eastern boundary fence with our neighbours.
On this small area, we've astroturf laid down on top of the concrete and this is where we've placed our palm trees and other hardy 'exotics'.
To add to the Mediterranean flavour, we've decided to grow a fig tree and so I set about making a planter with an integral trellis.
After playing around with several designs, we decided which one we wanted to go with and then out came the cut-off saw and a batch of our hardwood slats.
Construction was quite straightforward. We made the trellis fan first, the lower part of which also ties into the back wall of the planter.
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| forming the fan ... |
I've now been following our Grand Plan for four years, and here's the annual progress update on the anniversary date of 31 March 2017.
Firstly, the usual pair of graphs of Actuals v Targets :-
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| SAVINGS POT |
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| SIPP POT |
As usual, click on the images for a larger version.
Late last week, I gave the lawns a first cut of the year. It should have been done three or four weeks ago, the grass was long enough then and the weather not bad, but I hadn't managed to get around to it.
We've an old self-propelled petrol-engined mower, which makes the job very easy.
It's lost its brand decals, but it probably came from one of the big DIY chains originally. We'd bought it secondhand around six years ago, and in that time I've made several minor repairs including reconstructing the lever mechanism that controls the cut height and rebuilding the self-propel clutch, but generally it's been a great machine and starts first time every time even after standing unused over the winter months.
Here's the spreadsheet summary for the combined portfolio as updated on 31 March 2017.
(click for a larger image)
