Another busy fortnight.

This fortnight, fencing started on the western boundary at Strigidae.
In swooped our ninja-smurf in shining KingGees and his trusty steed (dog) Diesel once again – and the business of pulling down the old fence began.
Some of it just needed to be looked at, and it fell to the ground, however other bits took a bit more effort – but with the assistance of a snatch strap, a ute, and some creative driving, it didn’t take our lil ninja long to have it all done and dusted. Pretty impressive actually…!

One thing we did learn that day though: when you’re working in mid-thirties heat and sun, do not drink a thick-shake for lunch…?
A couple of very ‘green‘ workers were wandering round feeling pretty sorry for themselves that particular afternoon.
??

Justin also came out for us to run through how we were going to coordinate the electrical fixing next week – and if the weather holds this weekend and we can get all the panels cut, we’ll be right on the day.

A couple of weeks ago the potatoes which had been going so well, and were wildly growing, all started to die off at once.
It took a while for us to work it out, but we think we finally worked it out – once we thought back a lil – and realised they’d very likely been ‘got’ (unintentionally) by some recent spray drift.

So, with an overcast afternoon at hand, the decision was made to turn over and dig the mulch into the bed, and ready it for something else.
And as it happily turned out, we got a decent little haul of kipflers out of it – considering they’d only been in about eight weeks!
Happy days, as they are just the perfect potato and a perfect size for curries and other slow-cooker meals.

The tomatoes are going crazy at the moment also – and we’re pulling fruit off almost daily.

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[Later….]

We took the day off on Monday, as it was the day for Justin to come out and do the electricals.

So far we’ve been running on only a couple of power points at each end of our little home, so it has meant for a spaghetti-mess of extensions cords snaking all over the place, which isn’t particularly good practice at the best of times, but is never a good idea when you take Digby into account!
Thankfully – we’ve been super watchful whenever he was inside, and he’s managed to have had no electrical snacks to add to his repertoire.

John also came over for the day to help out – which was a huuuuge bonus, as we would have had a bit of a hard time getting it all done without him!
As Murphy Law requires, we got some decent downpours on the Sunday, and therefor couldn’t get all the panels precut for the walls.

We’ve now got power-points everywhere we wanted them, and have two ceiling fans in.
The only bummer for the day was that the sconce light we had bought for our ‘feature wall’, was faulty (in a dangerous way!) and thus couldn’t be installed – which was disappointing. And just to top it off, we bought it at Masters, so won’t be likely to be getting a refund on it dammit!

During the day when he wasn’t being our ‘muscle man’, John did a big clean-up and clear-out of our outdoor area, and it’s looking lovely and much more inviting that when it was full of grotty old pots and lots of discarded stuff and rubbish, that needed to be taken to the dump.
Now we just have to get him rummaging through and cleaning up the pile of girders and iron behind the shed – and the place will be almost presentable! :)) (wellll….definitely less feral, if nothing else!)

John also got a decent pile of the trees planted out for us.
We’ve been wanting to get them into the ground for what feels like ages, but there seems to be a never ending list of things that wind up higher up the priority list than that – so we just hadn’t managed to get to it.
But about 2/3 are now in the ground, and we’re still deciding on where the rest are going – but we’re bound to have accumulated more by the time the next plant-out session happens, and theres a huge number of plants to come out from the other house. lol

We’re spending on average two nights a week out at the farm, as well as the majority of the weekend, and as last night was a birthday night – we’d definitely planned to stay!
We had a scrummy salad with lettuce and tomatoes from the garden, some nice wine, good music in the background – and just generally had a serene and very enjoyable night…very much US. lol
Tonight we’ll be having a chicken curry – and you can bet there will be a pile of Strigidae kipflers in there :)))

Theres been a pile of cleanup to do inside since the electricals got done, as it was basically a day of everyone on deck working – and not giving a toss about what mess we all made in the process.
We all just had to get in and do what needed to be done, and the late addition of an afternoon tropical storm meant that panel-cutting was also moved and was getting done inside. Sawdust everywhere….!

Now that its all done though, it means we can get into putting up the rest of the wall panels.
But for this weekend – we’re going to have to concentrate on getting the place mowed, as we had a downpour on Monday – which thankfully cooled the place down loads – but the grass has of course thrived from it.

At least we have a lovely cool breeze blowing today – so its time to go get busy!

’Til next time: remember to take pleasure in the ‘simple’ things…