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Apart from a few very welcome interruptions by visitors here and a party there, the daylight hours have been spent continuing the garden plot building. Except for an extra interruption when the sieve of legend finally called “time” about 4 barrow loads from full and started joining up a few little holes into bigger holes, kinda defeating the purpose of the sieve. It had also developed quite an impressive bow.

A reasonably quick re-string later and we were back in business, and we were back to grass level again. But the sieve’s just not the same. The first stringing had just got a nice flex and feel to it, honest. It was just better!

It was only slightly disheartening to watch the top of the plot turn from nice soil to small stones when we gave it a good watering in. I’m sure we’ll re-sieve it sometime with a slightly tighter mesh now we’ve done all the hard work. But that can wait!

As can plot B3. At least until we’ve got some more compost to drop in there. We can’t dig out all the soil that’s in the plot until we’re ready to fill it again in case the sides fall in while it’s empty. At least that’s sounding a pretty damn good excuse to me! And I think we’ve got deck to do before we’ll get on to that. I think. Hopefully! I’ll let you know…

I’ve been digging through the seeds seeing if there’s anything that we can plant, and it looks like some carrots and raddish seeds might be worth a nudge. Stay tuned!

I’ll give this one in the deck series a number again, as I do think we made a bit of progress today. Just a bit. Until 1pm when work stopped for the day.

The biggest portion of deck by our room is finally finished, and the long run down the games room is completely finished too. My arms hurt from nailing all the planks. But it’s a good hurt! Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself!

And apparently I get a break until Monday. When we’ll see if we can get this bloody thing finished. I think we’ve now got 3 bits done out of 5 1/2. I suspect that’s 2 more days work to go, but we’ll see… Stay tuned. It’ll be over soon, I promise! But at least it’s pretty much looking exactly like I imagined it still. And Bec’s still liking it too. Whew!

Another full day deck building, and we’re still not even close to being done! I really don’t know how it’s taking so freaking long to get this bloody deck sorted, but it is. It’s not like we’re standing around all day picking our noses or something, but yes, I agree that it seems to be taking forever!

But at least we now have, erm, one out of five and a half bits finished and nailed off (by guess who!?) And only a very small amount left of the biggest second area left to finish. And a huge number of short boards cut and ready to be nailed for another two sides.

Sigh. But at least I managed to bend my fingers just enough to be able to push the shutter release on the camera to get you this twilight shot of progress. You owe me!

And we’re back at it tomorrow. Apparently. We’ll see. Mind you, my wrists could maybe do with a rest after nailing all late afternoon… I give it a 50/50 chance of being finished by this time tomorrow. 40% of the 50% will depend on us having enough deck timber. That’s looking like it’s going to be a very close run thing.

But on the up-side, working outside all day, every day lately means I seem to be getting some sort of winter tan without having to spend all that money on ski-field passes etc. Which is just as well, as apparently there’s no snow on the ski fields anyway!

Another stunning day, another slog outside. This afternoon (after the ground had unfrozen from the frost) we managed to refill the first plot back up to its original level! What an achievement!

Put like that it seems simple, but the grind of sieving seemingly endless barrow loads of dirt was starting to take its toll by the end.

But its done. Compost folded in. More dirt in. Stomped down. Watered in a bit.

Watching the kitties discover a sprinkler for the first time was quite amusing. Fidget in particular had lots of fun putting paws and head in the streams. And then playing in the mud. Getting very dirty. Again!

Now we should really put the plot to bed properly for winter with a bit of mulch or something, but I’d probably have to get keen with the weed-eater for that, so it can wait. We’ll see how much this lot settles first. Although we do have a batch of tulip bulbs with no place to go, so maybe one end might end up a tulip patch temporarily…

Now. Just two more to go. For now. But it sounds like we’ll have a deck day tomorrow, so we’ll use a few different muscles for a bit, and let the sore ones rest. Hopefully!

It’s been such fantastic weather lately that we just cannot stay inside. So we’ve been finding things to keep ourselves occupied outside (while we wait for more deck action, of course). We had such fun digging holes for the deck that we thought we’d have a crack at some bigger holes. Much bigger holes! Big long trenchy type holes. Holes for vege plots, in fact. As someone recently reminded me, we do need to look at farming larger bits than just our four little 1mx1m plots way up by the water tank. So we’ve started with three 1.2mx3.5m trenches closer to the house.

So far over the last day and a bit we’ve managed to take all the turf off them all, and dug one out to 30-40cm deep. As with all holes around here it was pretty hard going. The jarring from constantly hitting stones takes its toll on the elbows and wrists, but we got there. We’ve even started to re-fill it with the layer of decent topsoil that we saved from the hole and screened with the trusty garden sieve, which is still providing sterling service! Now we just have to add some compost, and then screen the topsoil from trench 2 over top, mix, and then keep adding topsoil until we’re done. Easy! But potentially back breaking. We’re planning to have them as raised bed type gardens, but we’ll try just mounding them up without anything around them to start with and see how that goes.

We did look at using either timber or corrugated iron for sides to taller raised beds, but the conflicting, confusing advice about whether you can/should use treated timber, etc just got too much, so we’ll try the old-school approach first.

Whatever we do it’ll have to be fenced to keep both the wind and the hares away. But we’ll deal with that once we’ve got the dirt bit done!

One of the few remaining issues that we needed to sort before we can get final tick-off from the council on the house was that our effluent pit needed to be fenced off. To protect it from all the stock that we, erm, don’t have and will never have around that area. Hey-ho. Just do it anyway, don’t think about it.

Luckily we have a few waratahs and fence netting lying around the place form when someone was grazing the patch a long time ago. We figure it’s now past the time when he’s likely to bother to pick it up (and even less likely now that apparently he has no stock now), so it’s been kindly taken as a donation.

So we smacked up a little fence ourselves.

Sounds easy, but it took a little longer than we thought, and we learnt a few things along the way, like:

1. The ground around here is stony. Bloody stony. Of course we knew that already, but everything we do reminds us of that. Luckily we had a big mallet that Mum had procured with a load of tools which had previously been kindly donated to the cause. And we had a set of 2 steps that got us just up high enough to bang in the waratahs. We only had to bang in halfway, remove and bang in again, repeat, for 4 times with one post. Must have been a big rock in that area!
2. No 8 wire fence likes to stay where it’s been previously. Trying to get it straight again after it’s been in a loose, messy roll for a year or so is actually quite hard, especially when it’s had weeds etc growing right through the roll.
3. No 8 wire is actually bloody hard to cut, and pliers won’t do it. Luckily we managed to borrow some decent cutters from friends down the road.
4. And an old favourite: Make sure you don’t stand right in front of someone banging in posts in case the head of your mallet falls off. (Luckily I wasn’t!)

It’s only a semi-temporary fence anyway, as until we get all the ground evened, and the piles of crap left by the drain-layers right beside it dealt with it’s a bit dangerous to put a good one in. Let’s just hope it passes the inspection!

Yesterday we continued the slow progress towards actually having a deck. And by the end of the day we did indeed have some actual deck!

Yes indeedy! About 7 boards worth! Doesn’t seem like much really, but we did have to get all the joists installed first, and there was a bit of faffing about with some of the tricker bits for supports around the pillars… Hmm. Still doesn’t seem like too much, but the builder’s doing a good job of getting it all nice and perfect, with mitre joins along the runs etc.

My main job of the day was to start the job of cutting a large number of shorter boards for the “walkway” bits of the deck whenever the big, scary saw was free.

I got a fair few done in the end. So they’ll just need nailing once we’re sure of the spacing. Bec asked the builder if he liked the walkway bit, and pointed out that he hadn’t seemed too sure about what it would be like before, and he said he did indeed like it. So that’s a relief!

So hopefully by the end of next week it’ll be done. Bloody better be! Most of the slow bits have been done now, so things should speed up.

Ok, ok, ok! I’ve heard the calls for pics, so here’s a few. All the actual decking is just piled up in stacks, drying, of course. That’s not the final product!

We’re looking for a walkway type effect around the courtyard, with more of a deck outside our bedroom, and more of a wide step thing outside the lounge. Hopefully you get the gist.

They’re even clicky for a slightly bigger view if you need to see some of the finer details. But it’s a horrible grey, dim day here. Not very conducive to good picture taking. Sorry!

This is possibly starting to seem like a bit of a saga to you. Believe me it’s seeming a huge saga to us too! But after a bit of a delay while some new timber was delivered, and some old timber removed, both on the back of a big truck (again ripping up more of the “lawn”) we were back into construction mode again today. Yay!

As usual, the builder arrived bright and early, but alone this time. So I spent the day playing builder’s boy. I even got to use the big scary drop-saw as well as the less exciting tape-measure, pencil, hammer and square. I admit to having no desire to take up the chainsaw he used to chop posts to size…

It was a long day’s work, but we managed to get all the bearers chopped to size and nailed down, with all the joists cut but not yet fixed to the bearers.

Summing it it in that one sentence it suddenly sounds like we didn’t get much done at all, but we did, honest! There are a lot of bearers to go around the double rows of posts, honest!

Last stage once the builder had left for the day was to move all the decking timber up onto bearers resting on the cut joists to dry out for a couple of days before the last (hopefully!) big effort in getting the actual deck nailed down. Luckily for me Bec pitched in and helped get all that moved, which we managed just before the daylight disappeared completely. But at least now with the bearers done and the timber along it we can really see the shape of things.

And the good thing is that it’s looking just how I imagined it. And wanted it. I think that’s actually due to being there and helping though, carefully making “helpful suggestions” to the builder, like how it might be quite good if we could possibly move the bearers to the outside of the posts as that might look a little neater given we’ll be able to see them from the other side of the house… I do shudder to think what we might have ended up with had we just left them to it. Of course we would have had a fully functional deck, but maybe with a few bits here and there we’d not be as happy with. But luckily we don’t need to deal with that.

Whew!

But I was so busy working that I forgot to take any photos while it was still light enough. So you’ll have to wait until it’s light tomorrow for some pics. Assuming I can move to talk some, of course! And assuming you deserve them.

And other cracking day weather-wise, so out in the garden we went to plant a few bits and bobs that we picked up yesterday afternoon from a couple of local nurseries. On the schedule a few native grasses, trees, and some shallots.

Grasses: Planted. Shallots:Planted. Trees: 2 out of 5 planted…

We discovered one of the other seedlings we’d planted a week or two ago had been well and truly munched, presumably by the hare that we watch, seemingly without a care in the world, past our back door every night.

So given that we only had enough little stakes to make up 2 windbreak/hare protection fences we only planted 2 trees. The others are waiting within the hopefully safe compound of the vege patch until we can grab a few more stakes and cloth.

Gotta get me something to deal to that pesky hare!