the never ending garden destruction

On Saturday I had a wedding to shoot a few hours away from home, I left the never ending destruction gardening in Mr M's capable hands. The front yard was still a bit of a disaster zone, with the jungle still...well a jungle, the camellias and rhododendrons I have noticed have some buds so I might wait until they finish flowering to fully attack!

This area (above) in front of the house had concrete garden edging running everywhere, when I left Saturday morning Mr M was digging it out (left) and on Sunday morning when I woke up I found all the concrete removed and the holes that were left filled in with beautiful Thorpdale red topsoil (right). Nice one Mr M. These photos only show a small portion of what the scene actually looked like, there was concrete everywhere and subsequent little mole hill trails all through the garden. 

And I mean concrete everywhere!!!

If I never have to look at another chunk of concrete again I will be a happy girl. So. Much. Concrete. The concrete as it turned out was the least of our worries, once we dug a few inches below the surface of our new yard area we found an assortment of not just tree roots and rocks (which we expected) but rubbish, scrap metal, plastic, old hoses, broken bottles, old seed and fertiliser bags, kids toys, leggo, tarps. You name it and it was dumped under where those nasty cypress trees used to stand.

Looks like a lovely new big lawn area right? Wrong!

Once we started digging we couldn't stop. Notice how the lawn has died off here after Mr M sprayed it on Saturday, preparing to hoe it.

Why not leave all the rocks and roots and junk there you ask? Well for starters I don't really fancy having a landfill dump in my yard, and secondly because this area of lawn we planned to rip the ground with the brand new and sparkly rotary hoe (Mr M's new toy) and then sow it down to lovely new grass with the tractor, seeing as though at the moment we are sowing down our pastures after potatoes have been harvested off the paddocks. Killing a few birds with one stone really. Plus this new area of yard (which used to be paddock) was incredibly uneven and full of weeds, we flattened it off a bit and sprayed it on Saturday to kill everything before we sow it hopefully in the next week.

The remainder of the old garden fence still had to be pulled down too, and luckily enough Mr M's parents came to visit on Sunday so I put Mr M's dad to work with the angle grinder to cut off the steel piping from the top of the fence. He then pulled the wire off leaving us with just the concrete posts to pull out with a tractor. Yup, more concrete. 

Remember the crater I mentioned? Well that is it on the right (above) where a cypress tree once stood. Now the crater is just full of roots, dead grass, clumpy soil and yes you guessed it - more concrete! By Sunday night we had cleaned out the crater though and filled it in with some more topsoil.

So after our original estimate that we would be ready to rotary hoe the side yard by lunchtime on Saturday, we actually began at about 5.30pm on Sunday!! We just kept finding rock after concrete after rubbish after tree root. My legs and arms ached from carrying wheelbarrows of rocks. Here is Mr M with his rotary hoe (insert ooh's and aah's of admiration). What? Doesn't everybody hoe their garden with a humungus tractor and 10 foot hoe? ha ha As usual Tessa is site manager, although I did have to put her on the back of the ute to avoid getting rotary hoed into the earth!

Whilst we are gardening the dogs usually take it pretty easy and cruise around with us, until Pip gets awfully distracted and takes off after the nearest mob of lambs, lots of yelling and screaming and cursing ensues generally. Sigh. But my little Tessa and beautiful Lily wander and sit quietly and just mosey up for an occasional pat. Tessa is hunting for grubs down the driveway on the left (yes she hunts for bugs and beetles to eat, just like Pumba). You can see the old garden fence with the wire removed on the left. And on the right is our Lily-pad, gentle soul that she is, patiently watching Mr M work no doubt. In the foreground is our crabapple tree which my sister and brother-in-law gave us for our engagement.

Although we grumble about our jungle and how much time, effort and work it takes to create our dream country garden, it is rather rewarding to see it all coming together. Bit by bit, ever so slowly.

Mr M toiling away in the dark with his rotary hoe. He is a good man :)