Garden Work Day 9

A day of annoyances. 

Firstly, after not receiving a reply to my text of yesterday evening from the bossman, I had a word with the workers and voiced my concerns about the downpipe. Luckily one of the three of them has good English and when I explained why I wasn't happy with the situation, he was able to counter with an explanation of his own as to how the drainage would work. Except that I'm sure it wouldn't, largely based on my experience in Spain of the volume of water which went into our cisterna in a short space of time and from a much smaller roof area. He agreed to do it properly. 

Secondly I glanced up from my phone to see one of them depositing loads of block offcuts into a big gap at the end of a flowerbed. Yes it needs filling, but not with blocks. I told him that he couldn't do that and he began taking them out. Except that he didn't take them all out, so I put my shoes and gloves on and did it myself, at which point he got the wheelbarrow and we did it together.

And lastly, I continued in the garden by raking a pile of horrible subsoil to try and remove all the little bits of block and lumps of concrete. The guy with good English came to help, but when I said that the turf needed moving from the front verge to the back garden so it didn't go missing, he said they were going to lay the turf today. On the horrible subsoil. I told him that wasn't going to happen, the turf needed a bit of decent soil under it and I'd rather do it myself. 

Good grief, it's stressful! Most of the time I consider myself fairly easy going, but sometimes I'm not and will stick to my guns until I get things put right. My family may have a few things to say about that!

Anyway while I've been typing, a pipe has connected the drainage channel to the main drain, and the downpipe will be connected to the pipe in the ground as it was before diggerman arrived. When they've gone home I will shovel the subsoil off the lawn site and put it into the hole in the flowerbed. That's where it belongs, deep down.

Edit: when I shifted that "soil" I revealed a load of waste blocks etc  - typical builder behaviour - so I've dug most of it up, filled a wheelbarrow in fact! I texted bossman to tell him he'd need to bring more topsoil than he thought. Five minutes later he'd phoned to tell me not to worry, it'll all be ok, he'll bring some good soil. Result! I hope...