The start of a vegie patch

Old rain water tank cut in half

Good place to meditate !!

Might use it as a temporary compost bin.

Vegetable patch marked out, and grass chopped down.

20m x 20m - lets hope it's big enough !!

Next step - rotary hoe it.

After 8hrs of back-breaking work,

decided it would have been better to have hired a plough!

10 years of compaction by horses,

combined with buried rocks, makes for very hard ground.

Half the area is dug over - that will do for now.

Windows

Picked up 2 second hand windows at the scrap metal dealers for $50 each.

Had them delivered today - it took 2 men to lift each of them,

and they were puffing !!

Firewood

Had a 10 cubic meter load of green split firewood delivered.

It took up 24m of fenceline, stacked 1m high.

It now will dry completely to supply us with firewood next year.

Leaving it out in the weather means that the rain will wash though any tannins.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms are $10/kg in the supermarket.

Instead, we spent $9.80 on 2 bags of mushroom compost.

We keep them in the dark, and moist, and voila!

MUSHROOMS

These doors were being difficult to clean,

until we used methylated spirits!

Front of house

October 2011

September 2012

What a difference a year makes !!

Cleaning the east side

This was the east side of the house in August 2011.

Notice the picket fence window boxes, and the rusty iron roof.

Now you can see a new roof, and a larger toilet window.

A close up of the boards shows rusty water stains.

Shannon Lush taught us to cut lemons in half, and use them to scrub the boards.

The lemon juice acts as a bleaching agent.

The finished job - need sunglasses to look at it now!!

Oil of cloves

The exterior of the house is beginning to get a make over.

This is what it used to look like.

Then we cleaned up a bit.

Now we have a new roof, and the tree fern has been dug out and transplanted.

The tree fern was actually 4 trunks planted together, and a chainsaw was used to trim them down!

The hydrangeas have also been transplanted, and the old hot water service is ready to be recycled.

The vinyl cladding (which will eventually be removed) has mould on it.

This photo shows the ease at which it can be removed.

The solution is "Oil of Cloves".

1 teaspoon in 4 litres water, and the mould just washes straight off.

Leave it to dry, and then brush off any residue.

Thank you Shannon Lush !!