Chookie Chookie Chookie!

We've got chooks!
The girls moved into their new accommodation this morning. They were boxed up at their previous place about 9am, and by the time we picked them up and unboxed them here at 11am there were two eggs in the cardboard box. That's a good start. We have one barred rock - the large speckled lady - three bigger black ones and a black Pekin bantam, with feathers on her feet. She's my favourite already.

Construction zone!

There's been a bit of progress on the garden in the last couple of months, interspersed with filthy freezing southerlies when we've huddled indoors and let the plants look after themselves. A lot of what's been going on is construction. First there was the renovation of the raised bed outside the kitchen, which went from this:through this stage, as Julie pulled off the ugly old corrugated iron:
to the finished version, with another row of fence palings and a large quantity of compost added to the clayish soil:
The final structure could do with a lick of paint, but it's much nicer than it was, and growing a nice assortment of vege seedlings already.

The Labour weekend project, as well as a 5-year-old birthday party, was the construction of a chookhouse, ready for when we get ouselves some chickens some time soon. It's nearly finished, as you can see below, just needing a few finishing details - flashing on the corners of the ply box, the wire finished off, and the interior furnishing. That'll be a roosting dowel and some laying boxes. We've got a door in the end of the run, and the roof of the box lifts up. Julie has a lead on a flock of birds to live in this fine structure - look out for pics in our next blog update!We also acheived some traditional Labour Day planting - lettuces and beetroot in the raised bed, tomato seedlings down the end of the garden, boysenberries and rasberries against the shed, a boronia by the steps and I'm sure a few other things that I've forgotten. All in all a productive weekend.

Spring has sprung!

Looks like spring might be just around the corner! We have a tree just starting to blossom, not sure yet but it might be a plum. Just need to get onto pruning the apple tree, probably should have done it by now but time has been limiting.

We have a few shoots from the previously mentioned potatoes just poking their heads up. The only other change is the fast growing paddock...maybe we should get a lamb?

Taters

Today the kids and I planted some early potatoes in the patch - Moonshine, from the bag of the kitchen as the seed potatoes in the shed haven't sprouted yet. We'll see how that goes.

Lemonade

We picked some of the lemons from the tree you can see in the header - some to take to a friend's later, and some for the eldest daughter to make lemonade. It's a bit sour, but very refreshing on an unexpectedly calm and sunny winter day.

Archaeology

We've been in the house a few weeks now, and haven't done much to the garden bar mowing the lawn - a bit of a mission as it's been so wet!

This is how things stood this morning, from the back deck just outside our living/dining room doors. The first project of the day was removing the top part of the awful trellis around the deck, visible on the lower part of this photo. The second project was more exciting. Jules had bought a couple of bags of seed potatoes, so I decided to dig a bed for them and get started with this vegetable thing. I picked the top right corner of the pic, up past the washing line where there were a group of mounds - saving the flatter parts of the lawn for soccer purposes.

The first few turns of the fork brought up nice friable topsoil, but pretty soon I began to encounter metal. I ended up digging up a metal box, in pieces, containing a a heap of old railway related ironmongery and other rubbish. This is a railway cottage after all!

The end result - one potato patch and one pile of rubbish.

Garden blogs

I've looked around at a few other garden blogs, and there are definitely inspirational people around the place. It looks like there's a good community thing going on in Moera - see Moera.org.nz, for a community garden project, among other stuff.

I can't wait to get moving! We'll be in our new garden for the middle of winter - plenty of time for some planning before we do much, I suppose.

Oliver's introduction

A quick intro to us, me, and this blog:

We're a family of 5, and have bought our first house and garden in Moera, Lower Hutt after many years of renting. We have lots of plans for the place, intending to have a vege garden, fruit trees, chickens, and all sorts of lovely garden developments! This blog will be a place to put up some photos and stories of our progress with the garden and maybe some house projects as well.

We're not moving in for a couple of months - settlement day is at the end of June.