For some time now I’ve been working my way through a really big pile of well-rotted manure that appeared at the end of the drive one evening in early March. I’ve been systematically decanting it into buckets and then hand-sifting through it and mixing it with ordinary garden soil to mulch the borders.

I’ve worked my way through bins and buckets and trugs and planters that were all called into service in order to store the manure (as we couldn’t leave it where it was delivered at the end of the drive).

I first used up all the manure in the bins, then the buckets, then the planters and so on and have now worked my way to just short of the bottom of a tall green sack – the final container that we used to keep the manure in. There’s probably enough left in it to decant into one final bucket.

It’s just as well too as I’ve been working my way around the garden as I’ve been mulching and I’ve now mulched every border in the garden apart from one tiny little area; just enough for about a bucket’s worth of manure.