A Few Bales

Hi! My Nurse and Nurse-Bear encourage people to stay home where possible 🙂
My Nurse-Husband went off to bed yesterday to sleep off a nightshift and Nurse Bear gave me a hand with boxing up the potatoes.

And consulted with our odd chook out who forgets how to drink normally or eat chook food…

So… first up this morning, Barry from the market knocks on the door with my 32 bales of straw! (Well, he didn’t bring them to the door but you know what I mean!)

Nice timing Jeff going off to bed!
Just me and Nurse Bear and 32 bales of straw to relocate haha

Needless to say, I did most of the work…
I stacked most up in the carport and rigged a tarp over the exposed side so hopefully that will keep most of the rain from getting at it.
A few bales I will get into the garage to keep as dry chook bedding.

I lined a lot of the bales up along the fence in the garden and will start conditioning them with watering and blood and bone so they will break down quicker for nice mulch.
If I get thoroughly over excited and organised I’ll even try planting something in them.

And I used a bale to restock the chicken coop after an overdue clean out!

Of course, a few of them were in there instantly trying to kick it all back out… and Dora was spotted AWOL in the back paddock again!! 😀

Another task on my mind was to plant some more things.
I KNOW I insisted with myself about not doing a winter garden… and things may or may not work BUT – with things the way they are it seems silly not to just try.

This garden did reasonably well with some sunflowers, plenty of rocket and the marigolds. The sweet peas never showed!!
I collected a few sunflower seed heads then ripped the lot out.

Ahhh yes – potato.
Growing in the gap of the raised bed and the fence. How convenient!

With a lot of acrobatics I managed to wriggle and wrestle up a really nice lot of potatoes! (To add to our collection)
(I laugh to think of all the careful attention of preparing a plot and planting and making a huge to-do out of the whole thing – and left to their own devices I get gorgeous potatoes with no effort from me!)

Half the plot I planted carrot seeds, the other half I added in some of the cowpoostraw and planted spinach and rocket.

And of course I had help.

The forecast is for rain coming up so I thought I should have some shelter made up for Dianna the Huntress. I could put her in the hothouse but not many bugs and slugs for her there.
I worked on the idea of a blanket-fort and came up with this stunning bit of architecture!

Cosily decked out with straw.
I was happy to see that in the evening she bedded herself down inside! We are still putting her in the cat carrier and having her sleep in the slate room. She is still very underweight so I think she needs longer TLC.

Random garden and straw shot…

Tassie update: We are kicking all the tourists out by Sunday night.
Midnight.
I am a bit curious about how that is going to work…
Jeff and I went out – we had some separate tasks to do. I topped up some things at the supermarket and tried to buy too much chicken. Apparently there is a 1kg limit on deli chicken cuts. I think its a bit too small really. Jeff and I would usually have 800g in a meal between us, so a kg won’t do two meals which means going back which is a pain and doesn’t help if you are trying to avoid town… Not to even mention that what if you are a family of 5 or 6??
People who jumped the gun panic buying and hoarding need a solid kick in the pants.

We dropped off a box of food – eggs and veggies and shared some rice with Shirley. We chatted through the door (Lots of distance)
I also dropped into my friends shop. She was closing her doors today so I made last purchases before that happened. (Got to help the locals where you can.)
Dropped off another dozen eggs at a cousins front door before coming back home.

A friend dropped in and collected eggs and fresh veggies and she dropped off 5kg of onions that she got from a local farm.

It was like the long distance dance of the eggs and veggies today!

So… thats where we are at.
Hope you are doing well as you can in our crazy world!
Cheers