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In all the excitement with tools and sheds, I forgot that while the boys toiled away on construction efforts, the girls planted some self seeded seedlings of natives that we had found on Saturday morning when we were clearing out the aforementioned garden. A few cabbage trees, and a lone pitto.

Lets hope that they manage to take a bit better than the first lot from a couple of years ago (more on them later in the week), but we’re out there to water them a bit more now, so I’m sure they’ll be fine… As long as the hares don’t like the taste of them, of course! And they were free, so no real loss!

(The white stone’s there so I can see where it is to water it!)

As we’re scheduled to take on the construction of a full on shed later this week, I thought I better confirm that I can still lift a hammer and wield a saw!

On the list of things we might find handy over the next few weeks was a garden sieve to (hopefully) enable us to attack some of the large piles of dirt that have been dug out of the foundations and separate the stones from the dirt. I suspect the pile of stones will end up higher than the dirt, but we’ll take what we can for the garden!

As a construction project it went relatively well. I’d give it about a 7 out of 10. I know what to do better next time. And given the size of the dirt piles, we might need about 10 of them and some willing workers to make a dint by the end of next year! Luckily we’ve got enough wire netting for about that number!

Big thanks to Megan for modelling it as well so you can get a good idea of scale. We’ll put her next to the dirt pile some time soon so you can compare.

Have I mentioned that the weather has been fantastic here lately? While the rest of the country seems to have been hit with rain and other grot, we’ve been lucky enough to get away with the occasional blustery day, with the rest being blue-sky stunners!

We decided that last night was just too good to waste, so a quick trip to the supermarket later as a happy troup of four so we could consult on the purchases, a bit of a scrub up of the BBQ, and we were good to go with the first BBQ since we’ve been back.

Normal division of labour was maintained, of course. Women in charge of the salads, and a bloke on barbie duty, but I think that worked out well! Bec does like her salads, and Nathan looked right at home with tongs in hand. I just handed out the beer, really.

Just a tad too cold to eat outside, but it won’t be long till we can hang out in the backyard all evening, I suspect. YAY!

Once again the weather forecast was for fine weather, and even better it was over a weekend! Not that what day it is means all that much to us still, but being a weekend it does mean that we can rope in some others that currently have to do that work thing… This weekend’s task was to get the base of the pump-shed installed, ready for some concrete to be poured into it sometime this week. OOOohh! Concrete!

Well, when I say “rope into”, we did have to put in 5 hours of hard labour into the front garden first, before we headed out to do the shed. No, that’s right. Not our front garden! These guys, they’re not silly!

But with a bit of help from Jeff, and a bit it of “help” from Jake and Lexi, and Mr. Level and Mr. Square, we managed to get the base in, square, and level. Much to my (and our builder that just happened to be out there) surprise. Of course it will probably all move about in the wind or something soon, but when we left it it was bang on, honest!

Not a bad job, if I do say so myself! Of course it’ll look far more impressive when the shed is actually up… And will be even more impressive when it stays up, as of course it will!

Being out there also let us review progress on the main building too, of course. The day’s thrill this time was gravel! And lots of it! All in big piles just waiting to be spread across the foundations ready for the concrete this week. I just hope that the foundations here are as square and level as what we managed ourselves! Given the amount of dirt and stones we had to move from the patch scraped by the digger driver for the pump-shed base plot to get it level, I give it about a 50/50 chance!

Things seem like they’re moving fast at this stage!