Time for a bath and a lie down

Well after another day of hard slog we finally have something to show for our efforts. Not by any means finished but frankly even half finished is an achievement when there is a toddler in the house.

Ooooh and doubly exciting- I just worked out how to enlarge a photo- might have to nip back and enlarge yesterdays before shots as well.

So we managed to completely level the back left corner and get it flat enough to get the trampoline off the sandpit where it has been for months. Our previous house had a backyard the size of a postage stamp and was completely taken up by a huge mango tree so a trampoline was completely out of the question. So as soon as we moved in here in August we had a massive garage sale and ordered the trampoline.
As the grass grows back it should fill in most of the dirt nicely and then we will keep a small garden bed along the fence line - partly as we can't face doing any more digging than absolutely necessary and also so we don't expose the roots of the tree in the middle.

The other major achievement was redoing a border around our gorgeous poinciana tree- the one that has been earmarked for a treehouse.







Sorry about the scrappy photo on the left which is the BEFORE shot - forgot to take a photo before I started this little project as I didn't think I would get this much done. As you can see the garden edge is all overgrown, most of the rocks were submerged and the chooks had scratched most of the barkchips all over the surrounding lawn.

The AFTER shot on the right shows the same garden bed from a slightly different angle complete with a new rock border- made with all the previously submerged rocks , all dug out separately with a mattock and shovel (hence the need for a bath and a  lie down) Then just behind the rocks is an edging of mini mondo grass which had been dug up and recycled from the big garden bed we had been working on since yesterday.  I  do know that rock garden edging is so so 70's but if I want a new kitchen I need to save up for one so that means making do in the garden. Being able to recycle the mondo grass  means that no money was spent on this makeover at all. Also my hope is that the mondos act as a barrier to stop the chooks flinging all the bark chips straight onto the grass. Will get back to you as to whether this actually works or not. 

This job too was only half finished ( I just didn't photograph the back half) so guess what I will be doing in fits and spurts for the next few days. Hopefully if the weather holds we can get stuck into the rest of the big garden bed next weekend. Then I get to try and wangle some new plants for my birthday! Then again there is that  gorgeous retro bicycle I have my eye on............