Honestly, it's not as boring as it looks

Anyone who's ever worked on a patch of earth knows that when you turn your back, hard stuff, especially glass and china, rises to the surface. Of course they don't really - it's that the thin stuff gets moved downwards by rain and other movements in the soil (roots, worms, the vibrations of heavy lorries). I think, but I'm not a soil scientist so I may be wrong, and I'm very open to correction, that this is an example of that process happening. I've never seen it quite as marked as this so I guess that frost has also been playing a part.

My neighbour and I went out for coffee this morning. Even before we get their quotes, we agree about which builder we prefer - in fact neither of us wants to use the other one. We had a constructive chat about what we can do to reduce costs. We even talked about our monumentally different plans for our gardens and how we make the boundary work for both of us. I told him I want a very deep fence to keep out the badger that lives under his shed and comes into my garden at night to eat earthworms, daffodil bulbs and, I fear, my peony roots. He had no idea there was a badger under his shed but now knows why his dog chases to the end of the garden barking every morning.

There will be lots of stresses with, and negotiations over, this joint build and I really hope we can stay as amicable and positive as we were today.