Hard Work & Grand Results

So MyMan and I had a riproaring shoutfest the other weekend – the result of trying to live one life and four jobs with three kids at two different houses – and instead of gardening as planned I spent my Sunday at home sulking and catching up on some much-missed ‘nothing’ time when I really should have been washing, cleaning, anything-ing other than snoozing and mooching. Oooh it was lovely though.
Just to sleep. I miss sleep.

By contrast, MyMan spent his day clearing a mountain of white rocks and rusty wire from what will one day be our orchard and my much-anticipated veg garden. Today he showed me the photos of his work and I didn’t recognize it.
Where before there was tangled wire, hidden stardroppers and toe-stubbing rocks lurking in the moist depths of waist-deep marshmallow and chickweed – now there is a groomed stretch of lawn reaching all the way back to the scrubby fenceline.
Guilt much?

Much to my delight, the area will, indeed, get a lot of light and some minor protection from the sea winds.
A local farmer has already delivered our four-tonne of soil, some of which has already made it to the rose garden and my sweet potato hillocks and my Ag business boys have sold me four bags of over-priced cow poo for my strawberries. In the spirit of fairness, I’ll also have to buy four bags of chicken poo (at half the price) from TheBoy’s Year8 fundraising crew, despite MyDad having a whole chook shed just waiting for TheBoy to visit with a shovel and old grain bags.
The potatoes are still chitting (although there’s more on the way), peas are still sprouting (time to plant another round, and then the beans) and it’s almost time to relocate my lovely window box herbs and strawberries into permanent beds and start again from scratch with fresh potting mix.

There’s a mushroom-growing combo kit on its way (promising a multicultural mix of Swiss, Portobello, Button and Asian Oysters) as well as three Walnut trees – a impulse buy after MyMan casually mentioned they’re his favourite nut.
The big issue is they grow up to 30mx20m and poison any growth around their roots…so we’ll have to be very choosy about where we plant them. I’ve spent a few weeks pricing vegie plots – everything from wooden planks with H-connectors, to plastic-lined apple crates and shiny corrugated rims made by tank companies.

Whatever the option, considering the extensive size of our plot, it’s going to cost us around $200 per bed which isn’t a very affordable option considering we’ll also have to crusher dust a walkway between the beds to suppress the weeds, fence out the rabbits and future chooks (with a dog-run buffer between) and continue to landscape at my house as well.

But, while I’m all for reuse and repurposing, I’m not keen to cut down old tanks for my beds as I’m worried about rust and sharp edges even though MyMan assures me he can cap all the edges with split hosing.
Then today we heard rumours of a pile of railway sleepers discarded at an old siding where the line is being upgraded in anticipation of more local mining exploration. Local farmers have been invited to ‘help themselves’ so that means a late-night spotlighting tour of the boondocks tomorrow night, in between training and tutoring.
So we’ve compromised (although he doesn’t know it yet), the unused tank in my townie backyard will be cut into threes for permanent beds – that’s my strawberries, asparagus, rosemary and thirsty mints. But I really want sturdy, rectangular, raised beds as well – and sleepers will be perfect. If they’re in poor condition we can always upgrade them in the future when our money isn’t all being funneled into renovating two homes.

I’m a bit neurotic about wasting time or money on something that isn’t going to be permanent.
 I’m very aware that there is always going to be more than enough work out at the block without doing something that will need to be redone in a year or a month.