13th - 22nd December 2010

At last we got the call from Charlie and he was ready to do our drive. Everything was ready for him ...



... and he and his friends and their toys turned up bright and early on another sunny day. There was a frenzy of activity until an emergency occurred elsewhere and all but one of them disappeared.


Still the remaining man lowered the soil level around the west end of the house and dug out a terrace for the grow tunnel and produced a large pile of rather sandy topsoil.

Next day, they were all back in action ...


... and we gained a smart new drive. I was a bit disappointed at first as it was so blue that it looked like tarmac but, when it dried out, it looked much better. It was certainly much smoother than before and at last we can drive into the garage.


There were a couple of days left before our Xmas holidays so Dave was very busy setting up automatic timers on the hoses and planting everything that needed to be planted, including our new soft fruit bushes and canes.

And he also covered the new terrace to prevent it washing away.

And finally we tidied up the veggie patch which was looking very prolific:
The first bed:

Bed 2:

Bed 3 : newly planted out in sweetcorn

Bed 4: also newly planted out with another mix of veggies

Bed 5: providing a nursery for a few plant cuttings and seedlings I acquired from various places and a spot for the compost heap

Bed 6: the new site of the chook dome

And Alice was still ahead in the sunflower competition though there's plenty of growth still to come we hope.

6th - 12 December 2010

Although this blog has concentrated on the garden recently and all Dave's heroics out there, progress had continued indoors and, yay, we have some curtains! Well, we almost have some curtains, or to be precise we have curtains in six rooms now but only one of the pairs of curtains is finished! Still they all more or less perform their function and look pretty I think.

To facilitate this, half of the living room has been turned into a sewing room and I have an awesome sewing table, formerly the table tennis table, which amazingly is the perfect width for a roll of material and the perfect length for the ranchslider curtains.


The bathroom curtains are finished although the hems need pressing or resewing.

There is mystery with our bedroom curtains as the long ones somehow ended up shorter after I lengthened them, so I am still thinking about them. (And the colour is much nicer than it appears in these photos.)

The colour in the spare bedroom is just gorgeous ...

... and there is even a roman blind, a first for me.

Part of the renewed activity with the curtains was because of the imminent arrival of our nephew Alex, his girlfriend Tamara and niece Katie. We just had to keep them entertained and where better to start than to rediscover the flaxes!


Now that looks better!

And there was wood to split ...

... and an extra pair of hands or three were useful for getting the new shelter in the chook dome ...


... though of course Bold Wally had to make her mark!


Gotcha!!

And then they all went and so did the sun and at last we had some rain. But not before just about everwhere had turned quite brown.

22nd November - 5th December 2010

Still the weather remained glorious without any suggestion of rain. Lovely for us but not so good for the new little fruit trees or in fact anything growing in the garden. We had to spend much of our time moving the hoses - thank goodness for the bore!

We also heard that Charlie was almost ready to come and do the drive and so we had a wee bit of preparation to do. As well as the drive, he is going to flatten off a bit of the slope for us to use for a glasshouse / grow tunnel. After long discussions over its exact location, we prepared our chosen site.


It was also time for the chooks to move on again - 'just move them before feeding and they'll just follow you along' was the theory ...

... and it did sort of work.

The original veggie bed was growing amazingly well ...

... and soon we had another one planted out on the recently vacated chook dome site.

And the sunflowers in the family competition were growing well - especially Alice's, probably because of the rescue remedy she sneakily gave them when she planted them.

And never one to be idle, Dave set off on the next trench for the irrigation pipe ...

... which in places was so hard that it needed to be chipped out, even though it was just sand.

8th - 21st November 2010

The weather continues to be glorious - in fact I am almost wishing for rain so I have some time to concentrate on the inside projects. But while it is sunny, we just have to be out there and Dave's latest job involved a trip to the nearby sawmill for some free sawdust. And of course as it is free, he got a whole trailer full! The immediate use was for the paths in the veggie patch though no doubt we will find lots of other uses for it.

Alice left after a wonderful few weeks to pursue new opportunities up north and so it was handy that niece Katie fancied a bit of rest and relaxation ... and digging! She planted all the natives I had bought at a recent school fair on the soakfield which is one area that will not need to be constantly watered.


But all the other plants were looking distinctly thirsty and perhaps this led to many of our new fruit trees being attacked by the native bronze beetle. I spent several evenings catching numerous small beetles on the leaves but still the leaves disappeared. Finally I sprayed them with an organic spray and was amazed in the morning to find the trees covered with enormous versions of the insects. Sometimes the whole tree was stripped, like this plum ...


... and sometimes it was just the top leaves above the netting. Either way it was very sad as the trees had looked so healthy.

And after Katie, Paul dropped by and it seemed such a waste not to make use of his muscles so we set him onto the task of edging a bed outside the back of the house before the drive was resurfaced.


Yay, now we just need some pretty shade loving plants.

Meanwhile, the two bald 'Wally's had been growing new feathers and were disappearing into the rest of the group. We received eleven eggs on several days so at least one of them was laying. The whole group seemed quite happy and were learning that scraps and worms were much tastier than mash ...

... but we soon discovered that they didn't always know this as the bed we had planted up on the previous chook dome site was sprouting wheat in a big way!

But with a bit of weeding, it looked respectable again and all the seedlings we had planted were thriving.

On the other side of the veggie patch, the broad beans had just about done their dash and so we stripped them out and managed to collect 3.5 kg of yummy beans.