Apologies if I have brought back traumatic memories for those of you who have spent the last two decades trying to forget this ever happened but... I am the unofficial 1,672nd member of The Blazin' Squad!!
That's right bebe... It's not just Love Island that can shamelessly plug the chav kings of British Hip-Hop. As much as I have dabbled with rap in the past, this member only writes his bars in these blog posts and recites his lines about gardening and building fire pits...
...I know what you're thinking. How cool am I?? ...Very.
Fire Pits come in all shapes and sizes and can range from super cheap, to 'dayumn I need to remortgage my house'. Of course with this whole journey being about gardening on a budget, needless to say I went with the super cheap option. It was just a case of where in my garden was I going to put one?
Ideally, when you build a fire pit, you want a comfy space with a seating area that you can enjoy in the colder months. So for me it
made sense to build it near the bench at the back of the garden.
Up to this point I felt like the design of my garden had way too many straight lines, so I went with a slalom shape. I speak a little about why I did this in Best Laid Plans III.
I marked out the shape with some string and used a garden hoe to carve out the shape in the ground. Using the trusted grid technique I cut out little squares and removed about 3 inches of turf. Regrettably I used newspaper and not a weed mat to then fill the space with more pea shingle gravel. I also wanted a defined spot for the fire pit to be placed, so I made a circle with wood chip mulch on the ground. Two issues arose from this decision, but I will get to that later on.
Next up in our tale is a story about a cheeky man on gumtree that I will name 'Stuart' as I don't remember his name and he just looked like a Stuart to me. Anyway Stuart had two lovely looking Yucca plants in his garden that he was selling for just £10. 'What. A. Bargain' I thought as a tenner for two mature Yuccas is a steal. Stuart was clearly someone who didn't know a lot about gardening or just wanted to get rid asap. Both are the perfect scenario for anyone looking to find a garden bargain online.
So I told Stuart the day and time I would come to collect the Yuccas. Happy days, right?? ...wrong. Stuart must have afterwards realised the high demand for these Yuccas in the following days, so on the day I showed up he decided to up the price to £30 without saying a word to me. Now out of principle I would normally walk away from this but unfortunately £30 was still too good a price to walk away from for two mature Yucca plants. Another caveat that Stuart brushed past was the fact that one of them was a very established, deep rooted tree that was still in the ground and needed digging up. Anybody who has dealt with or owns a Yucca also knows that their leaves are like loads of tiny green swords, just waiting to make you look like an angry one-eyed pirate.
Just to add to the fun it was also a very hot day, so Stuart decided to hand me a spade, sit in the shade and watch me sweat and dig for the next hour. This Yucca just would not move no matter how deep I dug, so eventually Mr Stuart thought out of the kindness of his heart that he would give me a hand to get this thing out of the ground.
Long story short: I kept both my eyes, got the Yucca out the ground and came home with a bargain... I bloody had to work for it though.
When I eventually bought the fire pit I had my eye on for about £25 from B&M, the issues I mentioned earlier had arisen:
1. Either a fox or cat had come in and decided to destroy and dig up my perfect wood chip circle
&
2. Apparently dry wood is very, very... very combustible
So I thought it was best to change the wood chip to plum slate and hopefully avoid any future garden fires... Even though I would definitely be the lead member of the Blazin' Squad if that had happened... I'll see you at the crossroads.
