Wild Hope Homestead

Last weekend I managed to get The Husband to help me start on some hefty garden work. First, he got out his trusty axe and chopped down a punga fern that was too shady and in the way. Then he casually proceeded to chop it up into smaller bits and put them on the compost heap. So manly. Meanwhile, I pulled out some weeds in the vege garden and propped up the passionfruit…

Then I told The Husband what I wanted to do with the vege garden. Which is another way of saying what I wanted him to do with the vege garden. Hey, well, pregnancy has its limits. And he’s much stronger and more manly than me on any day. What I wanted was to rip up the current four raised beds and create two long raised beds, which would be a more effective use of the space available. More vege garden space equals more veges. We used some wood lying around to map out what size the new beds could be.

While The Husband started dismantling the wood from the raised beds, I dug out more weeds and cleaned out the chicken house. I also started rescuing what vege crops were left that could be eaten. I discovered a very large rogue of a fellow; a marrow. Neither of us could think of a good use for a giant marrow, so it went into the compost. A better discovery was that of a lonely radish. I also pulled out a bunch of carrots, which will be handy, and a silverbeet. What is left and usable is a mass of spring onions, like a BIG mass, and a lovely parsley specimen. Poor parsley. It’s a shame to pull it out, but we can get some more going fairly soon. As for the spring onions, there are so many that it boggles my mind. It’s like someone tipped a packet of spring onion seeds in one corner. Probably what happened. I’ve given bunches away, I’ve found a recipe for spring onion soup to try, but still there are tonnes of the tightly-packed things.

That was last Saturday. Today I had great plans of getting stuck into the garden, but I had a horrible night’s sleep (or non-sleep) on top of a week of not-so-good sleep plus the Little Twiglet apparently started his/her own high-octane circus inside me this morning, all of which converged into a giant ball of dysfunctional Twiglet. The last few weeks I have variously felt like a sloth, a wombat, a walrus and a whale, and this morning I felt like all of the above. What a great mental image. Having a shower and getting dressed was going to be my great achievement of the day, until the afternoon, when I forced myself to go outside and face the mountainous garden tasks that my brain wanted to do. Good brain.

Carrying on with my focus on getting the edible parts of the garden done, I started on the triangle garden, which is going to be my herb garden. I’m also going to plant three dwarf fruit trees in in it. It was covered in a thick layer of mulch so I was keen to see just how many stumps and things were hiding underneath. I began digging out the weeds and dug up five young flaxes that were in there. These I replanted along the side of the house and along the front fence. The Husband appeared some time later to shovel and rake the mulch onto a plastic sheet. Some of it I carted into the chicken coop for the chickens to dig around in. They were most excited about this. The Husband also dug and hacked out one of the stumps. Still a few more of those to go! Argh, don’t we love stumps? He also discovered some hidden concrete garden edging. Story of my life. I’m quite pleased that it’s there, as it will make things look neater and make mowing easier. A few hours later I plonked down on the couch, feeling tired, but productively, exercisingly tired. We’ve still got a way to go but it’s great to be making progress.