The garden - stage uno

The weekends have been cool but sunny, so Jeff and I have been out in the garden getting the veggie patch ready for the first planting. And Dad's been lending his farming expertise and his 72-year-old muscle, which is quite remarkable. The front garden's also a work in progress after we ripped out the "lawn" a few months ago. I use the term "lawn" loosely because the draught over the past decade or so has turned the grass in most neighbourhood lawns into dust bowls. We've ripped out the grass, put down a layer of weed mat and the new soil is arriving this weekend. We have 20 or so succulents waiting to go in as well as a tonne of potted plants and succulents that have been waiting for a permanent home for years.

We built the raised beds in the backyard a few weeks ago out of untreated hard wood. HEAVY WOOD. But well worth it. The herbs have been transplanted into other parts of the garden for now. Check out my collage of events.

I replanted some of the herbs, lettuce and silverbeet and we've been eating a lot of green over the past week.

This last weekend we lugged 3 square meters of soil down to the back yard for the veggie patch - in a 700 square meter block, that's a mighty long way. Dad and Jeff did the wheeling while I mostly filled the two barrows we borrowed from neighbours.

We discovered beautifully composted soil in our two bins and had a few bags of horse poo that we picked up near Daylesford. The prep work is done for the veggies.

Look at that compost! I'm going to put a little container in the kitchen and everything is going to be saved. Although I do want to make a couple of bigger bins.

I've ordered a bunch of heirloom seeds that should arrive in the next week so it's not quite over. I'm so excited about the seeds! I picked some crazy tomato varieties.

So we'll see what happens. I must keep up the momentum. After all, even David Hicks is a horticulturalist now.