Starting on the Back Garden

I went to the timber yard after xmas with our plan for the vegie boxes and came home with a few hundred kilos of cypress posts so we could start work out the back. And, having started, I have made an amazing discovery: digging post holes is hard work! Who knew? And who would have thought that there was an impenetrable mass of clay, rocks, gravel and tree roots just below the surface?

With a few breaks for more god-damn weeding, it has taken me two days to dig six holes. And there is something like twenty to go! Meanwhile, M. has worked wonders with our new garden fork** and two metres of mulch.

(M. has also discovered and moved a whole series of indigenous plants that had sprung up after our first weeding effort: a positive sign for the future. Hopefully she will do a post on these soon.)

**We snapped this six-month-old, stainless steel garden fork in half as soon as we started on the weeding up the back, an indication of just how well-established the weeds had become after six months of neglect!

BTW: We now have two wine-barrels too, thanks to my very generous brother, who has an abundance of these. He tells me they cost something like fifteen hundred dollars new, but are worth less than one hundred second hand.