RustyRaven

Thanks. It's amazing how much some of the plants have grown since I put them in. Its only been about 4 1/2 months since they were planted and they all started as small tubestock.

Mulching is done!

I have a couple of mounds at the back to spread out once the pumpkin is out of that patch of garden. It turned out to be a pretty good amount (2m^2^) and covered the garden and a narrow path along the back fence behind the vegie garden.

Cleaning up the driveway was a bit tiring, as leaves from the mulch blew around everywhere and I had some bonus sand that was in the truck from it's last delivery. I had to sweep the whole lot down, and ended up doing the entrance area and sweeping down the walls which had a lot of dust and cobwebs too.

It's hot work outside today. It's apparently 20 degrees and 'feels like' 16, but it feels more like 26 when shovelling. I think lots of breaks to cool down is the order of the day.

I've had three coffees already, so can't use that as an excuse to procrastinate any more. Time to bring in the washing then start hauling mulch.

Something with lots of carbs to give me shovelling energy, please.

🙏🐈‍⬛

Miss Meow also had a fairly uneventful vet visit. She has been vomiting a bit though, so the vet gave her an anti nausea shot and we have to wait and see if it comes back. If it does continue she might need to be poked and prodded for some more tests and/or we might have to do an exclusion diet to see if it is an allergy. But there are no other signs of anything wrong so it's probably nothing too drastic.

Tacos for dinner as a reward for all my hard work today

They are not very Mexican tacos, the meat is pulled pork with more of an American BBQ flavouring, but they were delicious. The slightly weird-textured yoghurt worked well - extra straining improved the texture quite a bit, it does make a decent alternative to sour cream, which was what I was after.

I got about halfway through the mulch moving this afternoon, so I should be able to finish it off in a couple of hours tomorrow morning. That will finish of about 1/3 of the area to be mulched, but the rest is being done with bales of pea straw and sugarcane mulch so is a bit less effort. Digging out the front edge of the beds to remove the grass is the tougher work. I can spread that out over a bit more time though, and might have to do it in gaps between rain based on the current forecast.

It will be interesting to see how successful I am at keeping the edge neat. It's just grass straight against the edge of the garden bed, so I'll need to keep on top of the edging to cut back any grass runners etc. I have an edger with the solid blade, so it should be fairly easy to just run along the edge before mowing, I just need to make sure I don't get lazy and skip it.

I spent the morning weeding the front lawn and freeing the pop-up sprinklers from an overgrowth of grass that I think is impeding the effectiveness of the system. Because when I say 'lawn' I actually mean a patch of mostly dead grass with some green patches around the sprinklers. Now that we've had a bit of rain the dead patches are starting to get some green growth back again, but it's mostly yellow and crunchy.

I also pulled the worst of the weeds out of the nature strip, including making a start on the tiny weed patch between my driveway and the neighbour's. The ants did not like me doing that and I had a few little bites but I hate ants (after a couple of nasty kitchen swarm incidents) so it was worth it to piss them off. I've got some selective herbacide to kill off some of the nasty weeds like bindii, but once you get rid of the nasty weeds thre is not much more than bare dirt left at the moment. If I can clear the area and let some of the less offensive grasses move in instead it would be good.

My load of mulch has been delivered already, so this afternoon and tomorrow will be dedicated to hauling mulch into the back yard. It needs to be done by Friday, both because the weather is changing and because it's on my driveway and I need to go out. I managed the pile of sandy loam in that timeframe, so lighter mulch shouldn't be a problem. I guess worst case I spread it out a bit and drive over it 🤣

I'm having a load of mulch delivered today and my enthusiasm level for moving it is currently at around 10%. Hopefully after breakfast and my morning stroll with Mr Woof I will be feeling a bit more motivated.

A hearty plate of bacon and eggs with a couple of hash browns, please.