Top soiling the grounds and sowing the lawn

The many truckloads of rock and gravel that had been trucked in over the past 2 or 3 years to stabilise and level out the ground achieved their purpose at the expense of being an aesthetic blot on the landscape -- the kind of thing that keeps you awake at night when one has run out of academic trivia to angst over.

A few days before leaving we noted that a family down the road had got a load of great-looking topsoil in, so we asked where they had got it from. It came from the same source (Roger Sheppard) as all our gravel. At short notice Roger delivered 8 large dump truck loads of the stuff, along with a truckload of small rock for building up the immediate surrounds to the cottage foundations kin readiness for next winter's inevitable snow.

Once the truckloads were dumped, Roger used a small front end loader to pile the soil nearer the points it would end up in, to make it quicker spreading the stuff. He looked quizzical when we said we wanted it spread and the lawn sown before leaving (2 days later).

Harvey added his back-bending to ours and we had it all laid and sown the evening before we were to leave. It was a close call, and the aches were many and prolonged. But it's down, and Harvey says he'll post pictures of the grass growing, as and when it does.