Oh internet, how we have missed sharing our thoughts with you. It's not that we didn't want to, it's more of a 'no time to totally finish project and therefore no finished project to post about' issue. As followers of this blog may be aware, the inside of the house is mostly finished now. There is a bit more work to be done to our front door, some cracks in the ceiling to patch up (where Squirrel had a small panic attack in the roof while insulating it and mis-stepped) and maybe something with the dining table. Maybe. But what this means for the most part is that our focus has now turned to the garden.
Many moons ago, /i posted about my desire to obtain some fruit/vegetable crates to use as raised garden beds. Clever Puffin mentioned this to someone at his work, who told him she had a brother who would sell us a couple. So we grabbed the trailer, and high tailed it to the Ballarat/Creswick sort of area and picked up two former potato crates. Like a lot of projects, we have had days where we were able to commit several hours to the project, and would then follow this up with two busy weeks, so this was done in drips and drabs.
This is one of the potato boxes, which we have laid down weed matting in. Thanks again to the awesome Badger for supplying us with the weed matting and the green lining below.
This was Puffins attempt to measure out the correct amount of lining for the boxes. Do you even maths, Puffin?
With the trusty stapler that we purchased for upholstery projects (I have purchased another chair to reupholster by the way!) we stapled the lining to the outside of the boxes. We then placed in a layer of cardboard (thanks Squirrels work!) and a layer of crushed up newspaper. We didn't complete the layers at this point as we knew we would have to move the crates to another spot.
Then came the really fun, hipster-esque part. Making these part of the Squirrel&Puffin brand! I spent three nights with a box cutter and sections of cardboard, making a set of stencils to use on these boxes. As you see above, this involved one stencil in the shape of an ampersand....
With Puffins help, Squirrel sprayed our logo onto the boxes, which produced this awesome effect.
Squirrel & Puffin raised garden beds!
But that wasn't even close to the end of the project. Puffin and his muscles then demolished the existing garden bed/shallow grave in the back of the yard, removed the concrete sections and carted it all off to the tip. Then, to level this area out, we had Gary come around with a digger to level out the side of the house where we'd had the plumbing issues and made rather a mess.
(This is after it had been leveled out). This was a rather clay-heavy area of soil - the excess soil we put in the back garden bed. To neaten this up, we got a trailer load of small stones and a couple of pavers to just make it look a bit more finished.
The (nearly) finished product! (We were like, half a square meter short of stones when I took this photo) Better, I'm sure you'll agree. Now that we had leveled out the soil in the back garden patch, we could get a trailer load of chip-bark to provide a bit of extra drainage for the veggie boxes. We then enlisted the expert lifting help of the Sea Eagle, to move our boxes into place.
The boxes now have a layer of lucerne hay, and will be topped further with dynamic lifter, mushroom compost and another layer of straw. Then we'll plant them! Instructions for the layering of the boxes I found off this other local blog -Melton Gardening/Green Living Blog! It's always good to see terms and places that you recognise.
Puffin is going to finish this area off by laying sleepers around the mulched area, and then adding a bit more mulch around it, making it a raised bed with raised beds! But I really couldn't wait much longer to post something up on this blog!
Last week was Squirrels birthday and I'll take this opportunity to thank all of the lovely people who made time to see me or call me or send me a card. It was much appreciated.
It's also only two short weeks until the end of Squirrel's uni semester - so the following 10 weeks or so will probably see an influx of blog posts - most excitingly - the dining table, and the second chair upholstering! Hopefully. Time and finances permitting!
Much love.
xx
