No dollar project

The local Home Hardware store have a scrap wood bin and I snagged some pallet strap pieces for a future project, the wood sat around for a few weeks while we finished the front bit, and after that, I was twiddling my thumbs and decided it was time to dust off the saw.

No dollars were harmed on this project, none.

The Left bit is almost done.

The project for the left bit of our front garden is nearing completion, of course it will never be fully complete as we will be enjoying it over the years (and not mowing useless lawn) but fundamentally, garden construction is over for this year and, of course, we have plans for another area in 2020.

Here are a couple of photos showing the results of our efforts :

Planning Ahead

After some online searching my latest pair of Doc Martens arrived this week, I tend to start the treasure hunt some time before I think my current shoes are past it.

The first in line are my current gardening shoes, they are probably eight years old, they are still comfy and do a great job, the next are my current shoes that walk, on average, about 8,000 paces a day and have done for two and a half years now.

The new arrivals, well, they are magnificent, the original UK version, very heavy full grain leather with a ton of life in them.

They will be in storage now until they are needed.

The cycle continues

If you travel back in the blog to May 2018 you will see this familiar compost heap, and a year on it is time for an update on the progress of what was a large patch of grass to the side of the house, which happily is well on it's way to being expunged.

Photo one shows new weeds and grass/sod and kitchen scraps on the right hand side, we had removed all the good soil from that side from 2018 (you'll see some of it in photo four) and today I removed the back left quadrant of soil and deposited it on turned over grass and a cardboard layer for a bed close to the road (photo two and three).

There is only a quarter of our 2018 soil left.

The first bed you see, planted and mulched, measures about 5' x 4' and the new one is closer to 7' x 4' and soil depth is about 8" and I expect our last bit of soil will stretch another 5'

Photo four shows the developing shrub garden, what was once mostly grass is now evolving into something lovely.

Back to photo one, the full side is now covered with a tarp, to keep moisture in and for the good old rot to begin, in a weeks time, the left hand side will be emptied of soil, to be filled with all those garden and household scraps, to make excellent (and free) soil for the 2020 season.

A Right Pair of Hillocks

After an exciting few months of broken wrists and passing out on toilets, we are hopefully back with new adventures, planting shrubs, building little mounds of stuff, ordering mulch, and so the new season begins....

First off, the original hillock, a couple of Berberis Rose Glow looking after a Cedrus Deodora, Feeling Blue plus some new growth on the Alberta Spruce that we planted last year.

There is an extra hillock and more shrubs in this photo, plus five cubic yards of fine Alder Mulch, delivered this morning.

Meanwhile Back in Sooke....

Winter arrived, after all of us thinking that here in Sooke we would escape the Polar Vortex, well, it has arrived, and it is vortexy.

The Sooke Bus down the ditch on the highway yesterday :

Smaller, yet, more powerful...

On the right, the already modified Lego box Raspberry Pi 2 900 MHz version, and introducing on the left, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. A fifty percent or so increase in performance. This one complete with a fancy layered case, heatsinks and fan. 

Midget computers, with all the power.