Welcome to the page that’s all about our garden. It’s been a work in progress since the late 1980’s and it has absorbed endless hours and provided endless pleasure. We live on a ridge which looks toward Sutton Coldfield. The garden is about one and a half acres.The soil is built on sand with stones, lots and lots of stones. All of which means that it never ever gets waterlogged. It could rain for days (and sometimes does) and 2 hours later it’s dry again. We have 2 ponds, lots of lawns and flower beds. There are a lot of plants that we grow including rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and the like. These all like acid rich acid soil which we don’t have. But we struggle on. We planted lots of trees 35 years ago and now they need continual care. All of this gives us a garden that we love. A place to enjoy and be with nature.

With the virus lockdown which started in England on March 23, 2020 – The weather has been stellar which is made the garden even better.

This is at the 1st of May 2020

I wanted to see how the hedge trimmer looked in slow motion. I think it kind of works but not quite as I expected. Getting the POV shots proved pretty tricky.


Snow had been in short supply recently in 2019. We had 1 day – Tuesday 22nd of January when it snowed a blizzard for an hour or so and then it hung around on the Wednesday – enough for me to make this video which I quite like. There is quite a lot of technology behind it.


Ist of May 2018


This movie was shot on Saturday 14 April 2018. This is the Husqvarna Rider 216 AWD. It has a v twin 656cc 12.8kw or 17hp engine with a 103cm or 41 inch cutting area.
The interesting features

  • First up are the manuals here – they are 9 of them 1000 or so pages – of which 30 are in English and of those 30 most are dire warnings
  • There are stickers everywhere with warnings as well.
  • It is orange – orange plastic and there is no choice
  • You don’t get a fuel gauge you look at the amount of petrol
  • The cup holder and the square hole don’t seem to fit anything
  • The seat is adjustable – with a spanner
  • And the engine lid – you open with a screw driver
  • Infotainment system –  there isn’t one

Doug Score
Doug De Muro is a car geek on the internet. He has devised a scoring system for cars – the Doug score. I thought it might be interesting to score the mower.
Weekend Category
Styling it’s OK so give it a 5
Acceleration doesn’t make 60 miles an hour so it gets zero 0
Handling is pretty good so it gets a 7
Cool factor is so s so it gets a 5
Importance doesn’t make it on to the radar so that’s a zero
Daily Category
Features and equipment – compared to a car it’s not got much so it gets a 1
Luxury – it has a cup holder and that’s it so it gets a zero
Quality looks pretty good now so we’ll give it a 7
Practicality  – yes it is practical so it scores an 8 here
Value – it seemed expensive but compared to a car maybe not so – probably a 5
Add it all up and the DougScore is 38
So it’s actually better than some of the cars on Doug’s list – for instance the Isetta,the Yugo and the Trabant
You can find the list here https://imgur.com/QDEqJFz


We had our local tree surgeon to do some tree trimming on 11 June 2018.

The video provoked these comments
[16:42, 7/11/2018] That’s a mighty wobbly tree to be clambering up
[16:42, 7/11/2018]  Good non use of the visor there
[16:44, 7/11/2018] DBH: I did check with him that he felt he wasn’t breaking any health and safety rules and he said he felt he wasn’t
[16:45, 7/11/2018] Haha felt he wasn’t


Harvesting carrots 2018


Harvesting carrots 2017


Storm Emma Feb 28- 1 March 2018


This movie was shot on Friday 2nd of March 2018 – the 5th day of the Beast From The East.


It snowed around the 8th of December 2017 – which is quite unusual around here. It turned our garden into a winter wonderland.