Turning the Plan into Reality Part Two

or as otherwise called:

Getting rid of the Grass!

Matt getting rid of the grass to make way for the 14m long herb garden

Our new house has very little landscaping at all. Apart from one established garden bed there is really just 2.5 acres of grass. Lovely to look out over in the mornings, great for the boys to run and play on but not very productive and a lot of work to maintain. Matt mowed for the first time this weekend and it took him an age. That was partly to do with it being the first time we'd mown and have yet to figure out a good and efficient route around the yard and all it's obstacles. The other part was probably a teensy bit due to me doing the bottom half of the front yard (about 1/4 of the block) with the blades going but not lowered fully. Oops! I thought I was doing such a good job and Matt had to go and re-do it all!

On Thursday at the markets I started to put the wheels in motion of the plan and bought some plants from the "herb man" as Elliot and I call him. I bought him out of french lavender and rosemary and also bought punnets of parsley, sage, oregano and chives for the herb garden. I also told the "herb man" that I'd be buying all his lavender and rosemary for the next couple of weeks, he seemed suitably impressed! His herbs are really cheap ($1 for small pots of smaller herbs, $2 a small pot of bigger woodier herbs.) and are great quality. He also has an extensive knowledge of all the herbs he sells and he has a really wide selection too.

Before we could plant though we had to prepare the beds and after a while of digging up the grass by hand we called Matt's brother to see if we could borrow his rotary hoe! Incredibley lazy of us, but we had such a big area to do it was going to take us all weekend just to get the herb garden bed done! Shane and Shelley were around with the hoe in a flash and it took about an hour to do all of the herb garden and about half the area for the vegetable garden. While the (big) boys were still playing with their machinery I got stuck into planting out the herbs and the boys amused themselves playing in the back of the ute. Who needs toys?

Also on the weekend we went on the hunt for cheap garden edging. I really wanted to use recycled bricks for the edges and paths. The have so much character and charm, much more interesting than modern, uniform pavers! We visited the recycling shop at the local dump and found two pallets of bricks from the old Maryborough Sugar Factory! Yahoo! They are lovely, solid bricks with MSF imprinted on one side. What a find! Little pieces of local history in our backyard! We got the lot for just over $100 which is a bit of a bargain! I also found two moccona coffee jars and a Tupperware kids drink bottle that they threw in because we were spending so much money! Score! I wanted to take some pics of them yesterday but it rained all day so it'll have to wait for another time as will the pics of the planted herbs. The rain has been wonderful though, we had over 40ml Sunday night and the tanks are overflowing!

And finally, my favourite photo of the weekend! All of us looking at the camera! Hurrah!