Making Mud-Pies

After a fortnight's effing and blinding (not all of it out loud), I have now finished preparing the flower-bed for the Spring stuff.

It is in no way the gravel-free plant paradise it ought to be for the amount of work I've done on it. See that pile along the base of the wall? The stuff that looks like a heap of mud? That's not from the digging I was moaning about last week. That's just what came out with the

sieve and trowel
afterwards.

(This is what came out with the fork!)

On the basis that I never want to crumble up another sieveful of solid packed earth ever ever ever again, I mixed in the last of our compost supply to try and improve what it now pleases me to think of as "soil". I'm hoping that if I put swept up leaves on it and dig them in, they will rot down to provide some extra nutrients before I need to plant primroses or violets. In the meantime, I have put in my anenomes and snake's head fritillaries around the pear tree. That's potentially 30 flowers. When they start coming up in Spring, I will be counting...