Digging up the flags

I’ve disliked these flags ever since we bought this house. Once I’d decided on building a meadow, I had the joyous decision that the flags were going to go. And then the dread that no one else was going to have to move them except me.

Beneath them, is about 6 to 9 inches of concrete, in various stages of disintegration. Beneath that, soil that hasn’t seen the light of day for at least twenty years, more likely closer to fifty.

So I’ve been working my way through it, ten flags per day. Lifting the flags is the easy bit.

Hacking the concrete away is the tough bit.

And then bagging it all up. I think there’s 150 bags worth of rubble. At some point, I have to take all this to the tip.

Here’re all the flags, all in pile.

But here’s the end product of all this work, soil. The garden is almost a foot lower in parts, which I think’s OK. I’m hoping it creates an optical illusion to make the garden look longer.