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Dawn finally arrived this morning, and once the toast and coffee had been gobbled down it was time to mount the roller and give the drive a bit of a going over. I was slightly apprehensive about how it would all go, not having driven anything like the roller before, but in the end it was pretty easy. But only once I’d been up and down the drive a couple of times. The first few trips up and down were pretty bumpy (especially with the vibrate function working overtime on the rough piles of gravel), making me wish that I’d left my breakfast to settle a bit more before setting out.

The most interesting and unexpected thing to me was watching the impact one big rock in the gravel had on the rolling for metres afterwards. It’s kind of like the impact that a rock has on the water of a river, but I really didn’t expect to see that sort of pattern in gravel and rocks. Other than that it was just a grind. Up and down, up and down…

But up and down, up and down, round and round, up and down I went for a few hours. Stopping only to let my stomach settle a bit, and to pull out some of the big stones and fill up some of the worst holes. I swear I’ve never reversed as much in my entire life as I did today! (Of course some of that is probably due to riding motorbikes rather than driving cars. Not much call for a reverse gear on a sports bike!)

But it did look enough fun for Bec to give it a go for a while too. I think she even enjoyed it. The grin suggests she did, at least.

On Monday we’re getting another layer spread on it of finer and firmer stuff. That’s going to need packing down too, so we’ll have to give it another blat with a roller sometime soon. But luckily we can’t do that quite yet, my kidneys need a chance to climb down from my ribs first.

Yes indeedy. Life has appeared in the orchard. The first tree to end its winter slumber is the quince. A couple of others look set to go soon too. Let’s just hope all the rest managed to survive the stress of us novices digging them in and will do the same!

In other tree related news, we decided that two trees together are never right, so we’ve added a third to the specimen trees out the front. A hardy maple this time, so we should now get some red in autumn to go with the yellow and purple. Well see. Not in a hurry for autumn to get here just yet!

After a bit of a break where Tony had to go off and do some stuff for much bigger clients than us (can’t blame him, and it didn’t worry us), the driveway got fully refilled with shingle this morning.

Tonight we’ve hopefully got a ride-on roller being dropped off so we can spend an few hours tomorrow morning going up and down, up and down it to pack it all down properly. I just hope I can learn how to drive it without hitting anything important. Like the house!

Q: What’s worse than kitty breath?
A: A kitty with garlic breath!

And the main reason that’s bad is because Fidget got that breath from chewing on the leaves of our garlic plants in the garden. To the point where one clove was dragged right out, and some others were looking in danger of having no green bits left! And telling him “no, don’t do that!” every time he went back for another mouthful had about as much impact as yelling at an avalanche. So a bit of quick thinking later we rigged up a few little cages out of chicken-wire to hopefully protect them and some of the other seedlings from kitty love.

To be fair to Fidget, Pinot can be just as destructive in the garden, but she just walks over things, or in the case of the glass cloches, right through them. Sometimes chasing a mouse. But the cages seem to be working so far. At least until a kitty decides that sitting right on top of one looks like a good place to catch some rays.

In other garden news, spring is definitely here now. The daffs installed for us while we were away have started to flower again. And this time we’re here to enjoy them every time we go check the mail. Good job I knocked back that bit of grass with the weed-eater a couple of months ago so we can see them!

Tulips have poked up too in the hospital bed we made for them. Peas have sprouted and are slowly growing higher. Broad beans are reaching upward faster and faster. We have quite a collection of chilli, capsicum, tomato and eggplant seedlings taking over the kitchen table (anyone want a spare one or two?) which we’re trying to keep in some sort of order so we can work out just what’s what…

I’ll not bore you with the full current planting list. I’ll save some for later!

No one here but us today. Bliss! As much as we’ve appreciated getting things done, it’s been great to have a day of peace and quiet again.

To celebrate, we planted a couple of random trees out the front. Or the back. Depends how you look at it, I guess. Another try at getting a Golden Elm to grow (the previous one has finally bitten the dust, I think, thanks to a mean hare), and partnered that with a dwarf Claret Ash. Fingers crossed they make it!

Today most of the gravel piles that have littered the landscape have been shuttled into piles in the driveway excavation. Most of them. Some of the others have been shifted down the back of the paddocks to fill in a bit of a depression or two. Good job we’ve got that hole to fill in, or I’ve no idea where else we’d put it. Anyone want any ungraded shingle?!

But now the whole area is pretty much back to being a flat piece of land again it looks bigger. We’ll have to work out what to put in it pretty soon. We’ve been kind of putting off making too many decisions before all the clearing was done so we could see what it looks like. Now we can we’re still at a loss!

Next stage is to flatten out all the driveway piles. Should be tomorrow, but it’s meant to be a bit nasty weather-wise. Then I’m going to have to hire a pedestrian roller and give it all a roll. What fun! For the first 10 minutes.

In other news, the plasterer and painter have finished up now, and the problem walls are looking a lot better than when we started. Hopefully good enough! We’ll see when they all dry properly and we get some sun back. So at least things inside can get back to normal, which will go down well with both us and the kitties.

This is possibly starting to remind you of the deck saga. It is for me! But at least this time we can see a huge change each day. In part 4, the rest of the area was cleaned up yesterday, including the spreading around of the huge mound of scrapings that we’ve been starting at from the first day of real work on the site when the foundation area was levelled out.

Unfortunately that mound was the kitties favourite place to play. And our source of soil to sieve for the vege gardens. I have no idea what any of us are going to do now, but we better find a replacement soon!

It’s really weird to stare out and not see it though. I get a small surprise every time I look up.

So basically all the lawn area has been levelled out, and focus shifts back to the driveway, where all the piles of shingle can be spread around. Assuming the weather stays nice, that’ll happen today. Stay tuned.

It’s been all go here today! Plasterer and painter, as well as the wardrobe guys installing a straight wardrobe, along with the continued driveway and lawn works. My main contribution to things was to keep the cups of tea flowing and to stir the simmering Pinto beans. (The beans were for us for tea, nothing to do with all the troops). And to keep the kitties settled. As much as I could with so much going on. They found it all a bit much and spent most of the day sitting on chairs under the dining table.

But stage one of the driveway project was completed about 3:30pm. The whole drive had been dug out, and all the piles of dirt transported to the “lawn”, which looked like it had been visited by some sort of giant mole or something!

Then the hideous eyesore of the back area got a quick clean-up, and is now looking almost flat and quite presentable. I need to get out and do some shovel work tomorrow to clean up the bits close to the house, but I’m quite happy to do that small chore when I’ve seen how fast all the other stuff gets carted around and evened out. The thought of trying to do that with shovel and wheelbarrow isn’t a good one!

By 6pm a large number of molehills had been flattened out and spread around, and a level area was appearing in the courtyard area. It’s made a huge difference already not to have the ground sloping away from the house.

Assuming it doesn’t rain tomorrow I wonder what progress will be made then!

The creeping brownness seemed to have reached an appropriate level so the lawn man was back this afternoon to start the process of levelling out the lawn area around the house. To get enough soil he’s also digging us out a nice driveway. And all the huge piles of gravel around the place can then be inserted into the driveway hole, and then hopefully we can stop slipping and sliding along the drive on a rainy day! And we won’t have to stare at ugly piles of gravel any more. I love it when a plan comes together! (fingers crossed).

So as of now we have about a dozen or so large mounds of dirt piled up all over the place, looking like we’ve been visited by a giant mole or something. And that’s only half the drive dug, so there’ll be a few more yet. Then the fun bit of trying to spread it all and get a decent level. Good job we’ve called in an expert! Or we hope he is. I guess we’ll find out!

Whenever we’ve been out wandering the messy grass that makes up our plot over the last year or so we’ve seen various flowers come and go between the grass. Some of you might very well call some of them weeds, and I’ve got nothing to argue against that! Although we seem to have pretty much got on top of the “things that aren’t lamb’s ears”, at least for now.

At the moment we have these little blue things dotted through, mainly in the shorter grass areas. Or maybe it’s just easier to see them there!

I have no idea what they are, or an even an easy way to find out. So if you do, let me know!

Can’t remember what was around in September, but I’m sure you’re now looking forward to finding out just as much as I am! Stay tuned!