welcome to the jungle

The weekend brought many things: rain, sunshine, a return to Ythanbrae and the still empty cottage, seeing my little Monty-moo again, some art admiring, some art purchasing, but most importantly some garden demolition...

Mr M in his natural habitat, chainsaw in hand and leaving a path of destruction. He wasn't too bad, not destroying nice established trees and shrubs like I thought he might. He did go a bit nuts last week with his spraying, the wisteria and the fuschia has since drooped significantly but my mum assures me they will be back next year bigger and better than ever. Mum advice quote of the week: "You can't kill wisteria!" Right, got it.

Meet Mr M's latest favourite farm toy: the manitou, or as I affectionaly refer to him as: 'Manny'. He does a lot of handy stuff. He lifts things, drags things, pushes things, scoops things and is a general all round good guy. We used him to shift a lot of general crap that was around our new house, a lot of scrap metal, old furniture just sitting in the paddock (??!!), a lot of timber, spud bins full of rubbish bound for the tip. This weekend we used him to push over the old yard fence and pull out/drag to the bonfire a lot of unwanted shrubs in unwanted places and nasty prickly things. Behold...

This tree we debated about whether to pull it out or not, but it was growing out at a terrible angle and really in the wrong spot so out it came- add it to the bonfire! As you can see Tessa was in on the action, as always. She is our official 'site manager'. It's a ruff-ruff life here on the farm, says Tess.

This was some sort of old tank put around an old stump. Well Mr Tank, I wanted you gone so Manny was up to the task. I originally wanted the tank to serve as some sort raised veggie patch, but after Manny and Mr M were finished it was all a bit too 'rustic' (i.e. falling apart).

Our highly unattractive cyclone wire, steel pipe and concrete post construction of a fence came to a sad (or happy?) end on Sunday. Mr M expertly grinded the pipes off, pulled the tangled wire away and pulled the posts out using Manny, with me tying the chain around each one and giving a big thumbs up.

So now we can sit back and admire the view! Well, until the next garden demolition day, and then some re-planting and general tidy-up. Getting there, getting there...