To be featured on Google maps in the future...

The large patch of lawn at the side of the house is evolving after the first eighteen months, we have created a fourteen foot diameter circular bed with some large rocks from our local excavation site, added half a yard of composted soil and a bunch of rhododendrons, escallonia and an abelia in the middle. In the next week we will be adding lavender (for the bees) and finishing off with mulch.

 Three blue spruce at the side and a cotoneaster on the hillock.

It's been a lot of work so far, but such joy!

Seeing Double

I find myself in the fortunate position of owning one and a half lawn mowers.

The two hundred dollar Poulan in the background worked for the season, but it had a tendency to stall under very little load with the Kohler 149cc engine, had an awkward height adjustment mechanism, plus, after a very mild winter it was reluctant to start, and even after stripping down the carb and making sure the fuel process is good, it has not returned to it's previous lackluster levels  yet.

The new kid on the block is a return to a 162cc Honda powered unit, a Troy-Bilt lawn mower that feels almost as powerful as the vintage unit we retired when we moved from Gibsons. Hopefully we will get sixteen years out of new one. 

Fifty Year Memories

When I was a lad, we moved from Liverpool to urban Whiston, my amazing grandfather, Jack Edwards, a keen woodworker and gardener, built several structures in the large garden, and one he introduced me to, and encouraged me to be involved with, was the compost heap.

Last March we built a similar structure in our yard, and today, a year and a bit later, the benefit of the compost heap is apparent. On the right hand side, two thirds of a yard of very good soil, on the left hand side, currently being processed, probably almost a third of a yard of good soil (packed with worms) and the top layer, which will be rotated to the bottom over the next week.

The wall of good soil, about a foot thick, can be seen on the left hand side, similar to the wall of muck that I would dig into almost five decades ago while helping my granddad.