Why dig when you can have lesser mortals do it for you?



Today I was about to dig the garden over, pulling out the remainder of oregano (an expert spreader) and getting it ready for autumn planting. Then I thought of the chooks and how I could avoid all that work. Depending on ones space in the economic pecking order, this is either efficient capitalism or dole bludging. So I moved the temporary chook run over to the old chook run garden. The temporary chook run is a circle of wire mesh about 2.5 metres in diameter and 1 metre in height with bamboo poles around it and a criss cross of more bamboo poles across the top to give it some kind of stable structure. Spread across the top of the structure is green bird netting. Three birds worked hard from the beginning while two others skived off. Eventually the fourth bird hung out rather close and got put to work and the fifth one was so lazy that when I saw it head back into the permanent poultry palace. I shut the door and left it to scratch around on its own with no slug feast. It's easy to become a capitalist tyrant.

While they worked wonders in slug eradication, I began the project of digging around the roses. Last year Favourite Handyman buried the bokashi by the roses and was apparently so busy he couldn't weed the top. So the pre-existing weeds had a wonderful shot of fertiliser and the soil has been unavailable until I could attack it with a fork. The soil is lovely underneath all the long grasses. I'm going to move the roses eventually and put a grape there. I will also plant some winter greens there as it is a lovely warm spot which never gets frost.

At kindy today I told one of the teachers about my dressups plan. She was wildly, fantastically excited by it and is keen on us adopting a kindy. She will sort that side out, but we are thinking one of the kindies in the worst hit areas. That will give us a bit of time to get sewing (I'm hoping I can cajole an 'us' anyway). Tonight I began my first kindy dressup. It is a frilly top which I was given and which never fitted me and I had it put aside to turn into a dressup for Brighid. I've cut the fabric off from the armpits and made the bottom into an elastic topped sundress. Well it will be when I can measure the shoulder straps up on Brighid tomorrow. Even though I handed on a lot of fabric just a few weeks ago, I've still got quite a bit to play with and I suspect we will get offers of fabric from non-sewists. My jar of ric-rac is finally going to get an outing. Then there are the cool flowery sheets in the cupboard...

It's less than 36 hours until we set off for Christchurch and Brighid's operation. I'm avoiding the packing and planning for that. Not quite ready to look it in the face.

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