What an amazing few days of hard yakka we have had!  Don’t you just love school holidays for the extra help around the yard?  We do J.

I decided that this holidays the kids would help each day for at least 1 hour in the yard (lucky them, it is for pocket money!) and together, we have achieved a much needed make-over of the orchard.

It is weeded (only where necessary, the rest can compost down where it is – we aint silly!):

Just imagine the before – all that grass pretty much right up to the trees – they sure did need some love.

Today, they got it with a lovely thick layer of mulch:

We are very lucky that our local council mulches up all the garden prunings that are dumped at the tip, lets them compost a while, then anyone can pick it up for free!  Our garden loves it!  And so do we – we’ve been lucky that on the other occasions we have got the mulch, they loaded it with their huge front end loader…today, Michael didn’t have such luck and forked it all in by hand…isn’t he a sweetie?  J

We still need to finish off the other trees, and then add in some of our own home-made compost and some seaweed brew for nutrients – but the trees are well on their way for settling in for summer J. 

Oh, better put the retic back for that!

A wonderfully busy week of garden happenings too since we have been home :-).

My Honey has been hard at it on the bobcat – he didn’t stop for 3 days!

This rock wall was lowered a little as he had previously taken out some of the driveway to correct the drainage.  

Of course, the garden bed had to be lowered a bit too – look how lovely it looks now.  There are two transplanted lavenders in there (we grew them from cuttings stuck straight in the ground closer to the house) – and they have had a nice soak of seaweed liquid to help them settle in – here’s hoping they like their new garden bed.  Oh, and if you look at the end of the garden bed you might see the twin pineapple we decided to transplant too – really hoping it might get a bit more heat here and actually fruit – still a pretty long shot though…

The orchard got the love it needed – lots of mumby magic, covered with old straw and some rocky soil put in between the trees to plant up the chook fodder food forest next month:

And finally, an unexpected bonus of those many hours of earthworks – this walkway/driveway between the house and the shed no longer looks like a building site – yay!

Next month it will be planted up with baby natives – just waiting for the rain to be on the reliable side.

But today was “below ground” planting day (moon gardening) so these went in today:

Oh, and plus some sprouted ends of the Kipfler potatoes I had in the pantry :-).