Sunday, May 29, 2011

A lawn and a Native Garden

What a lovely autumn, early winter we are having. Forecasters say it is 2 degrees warmer than other years. Been great for us trying to get the lawn sown.

And of course once you sow a lawn you need a lawnmower, and the rotary push just wasn't going to hack it. Plus Dave loves his toys, so it was time to search for a ride on. Man, they are expensive if you plan to buy new, second hand was our best option, so trademe it was. A couple of weeks later and we own a Savannah Wildcat for a third of the new price.





Remember the few seedlings of parsley, broad beans, silver beet and spinach? Well within  weeks we were eating the beet, spinach and parsley, the broad beans of course take a bit longer. The bees and bumbles love the flowers of the beans, so we should have good polination.
We harvested 11 kilos of honey from our hive, simply golden heaven.
I have sorted out the style of fencing for the vege and orchard. Dave has ordered the posts and ply. Hopefully in the next 4 weeks my growing area will be getting fenced so I can start to plan the raised beds for our own organically grown food.

Oh and I did make the rosehip syrup. Dave came down with a terrible case of food poisoning and lost a lot of weight, quite run down as a result of the bug. So I collected the rosehips and made the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe, a bit sweet and quite a bit of work but full of vitamin C. Made some into a lovely jelly, gorgeous colour, but would I bother again, probably not.
We have planted natives into the front of the house where we spread 14 cubic metres of mulch. Direct from a local native tree nursery they were a bargain compared to other costs. $2.50 each and we bought $600 worth which will more than do all our plantings around the property. Next weekend we are going to buy our firewood trees, they are $1.20 each so a good investment in our own firewood in 10 years.

We have finally made up the bedroom we think of as Kev and Steph's. Kev's because it has his english antique bed in it. When they return to good old NZ, if they intend to settle they might want it but meanwhile it looks nice in the spare bedroom.



The electrician returned a couple of weeks ago to do some more work. He got some of the exterior lights fitted as I was complaining of the danger of falling when trying to go outside once it had become dark. It was a right hazard going out the front of the house at night. It is a big drop from the wooden deck at the front door down to the driveway. This is because the driveway has yet to built up so currently is about a half a metre below the finished level.


And finally, we continue to unpack boxes. Today I found the boxes containing the sherry decanter and the clocks. Dave's Aunty Hilda had given him a lovely brass clock that had family significance for him, so it was great to place it in its new home. And we made plans to get some storage underway, the bookshelves for the library are one of those "must do's". The tiler for the bathrooms came this weekend agreeing to get the bathrooms completed. Dave started our ensuite but with working full time there just isn't enough hours in the day. I keep telling him, pay the experts and concentrate on what you do best, roading and concrete grinding if you feel like it. He does the odd grinding job but really road safety is his new career, about his 5th careeer change. Change is good.

1 comment:

Hailey Bloore said...

House looks great at night!