Wednesday, April 25, 2012

ANZAC Day Gardening

Long Story Warning

My new southern neighbours are Tony and Lucy. I met them by running my car, Jaffa, into their uncle's car while they were moving in.
I had moved my insurance from GIO to Bingle to save money and now I was facing the fear of finding out if that was a mistake. It was the Sunday night of the long weekend. I went to Bingle's website to find out what to do and it had an option to press 'ring me'.

And they did!

3 minutes later I was talking to someone with no accent, paid the excess and had booked my car in for repairs. They gave me a claim number so I could trot next door to give it to Uncle. He can claim it on his insurance and give them the number or if he wants he can use the number and claim directly from Bingle.
I was very impressed. (Not so impressed with Edwards, Bingle's repairer, who are going to take a week to fix what is barely more than a scratch on my car and replace the bumper bar.)

Anyway, I had made the acquaintance of my neighbours. Their kindness when I was distressed at running into their car was very much appreciated.

Since then I have had the chance to meet Tony and Lucy's dad, Mick. It turns out he and his wife run the Narooma Bakery. He seems like a very nice bloke and chatty.

He has got landscapers in to do their yard and yesterday, as I was driving off for work, he offered me their turf leftovers.That set the agenda for ANZAC day.

I ordered more dirt and it was delivered on top of the rolls of grass. 
Sigh.

Kate had tried to move them out of the way in preparation, but the delivery guy tipped it too close to the wall. So an enormous landslide of dirt fell on top of the turf.

This morning Bill and I got into it. Bill started by getting some loads of rocks to fill behind the other half of the wall and I joined him. (read 'took over'- the boy was wearing flipflops aka thongs and chosing the indidual rocks to pick up)

Rocks and Soil back-fill

Once there were enough rocks, I filled behind with soil and Bill dug a hole:

Bill's Aspergers Hole
Bill is very focused. And everytime any of the walls subsided, I would hear his wail. He is a funny fellow but I like him :P He shifted that dirt over to the area near the driveway.

Before long, I realised we needed to leave the main pile alone as there was more than enough soil in the landslide to level out the area where the lawn was going.

It was past lunch time so I sent Bill off to get some Turkish bread for our empty tummies. I kept shifting the dirt off the turf until it was free then attempted to level the soil. I think it is safe to say I did not do a very good job at the levelling.

In my defence:
  • I was exhausted by now
  • The lawn had to be laid or it wouldn't survive- it was already yellowing
  • I was imagining I was in Biggest Looser and this was the digging challenge
Reduced evidence of landslide

Getting it done took precedence over getting it perfect.
(It isn't quite as bad as it looks in the picture above though.)


The lawn and Jaffa absence due to smash repairs

So I rolled out all the turf and filled in the gaps with soil so that the Sir Walter buffalo runners can fill themselves in. I gave Kate a bucket of soil to help me do that while I packed away the tools.

(Let me just say: by the time you have hauled rocks, dug and pushed wheelbarrows of dirt, raked and dug some more- picking up those turf rolls really is an effort!)


Plans and stages
 And so it is done! That much at least. Not in the order I planned but I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Thanks to Bill and Kate for their help and I have to laugh at Erin who has just found out we have a front lawn on Facebook.

Go and buy a cake from the Narooma Bakery and say thanks for me!


Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Gardening

Actually there is such a long story to tell, but all I have time for tonight is a few photos of gardening!






Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Crazy Lady

So!
When I wake up in the morning, Mark will already be flying to Australia.
o.o
Can you believe it after all this time?
Do you know how many stories of doomed internet relationships I have been told?
Do you think hearing them makes a jot of difference?

Mark and I are both smart, mature people.
So we have our eyes open.
We are both frightened.
And hopefull.
And excited.

I guess we both have a place in our thoughts that is preparing us for failure. But out loud what we say is this-
This is not the end or the beginning. This is the next part.

Will it be a failure if we decide that an internet relationship is all that we can have? In some ways yes and in some no. It will be horribly sad if it isn't leading us to something more. We have both invested a lot of heart into it.

The 'no' side of the argument is that Mark had been my closest companion through 3 of the hardest years of my life. That can't be a failure.

I hope I have done something for him that makes it worth it. But all I can remember is my increasingly irrational behavior as the tension has built over the last few weeks.

I hope he feels loved, admired appreciated. I hope he feels proud of who he is. If I am not the one for him, I hope he goes out and finds some one as gorgeous as he is and not some crazy lady in Oz!

Monday, April 2, 2012

Plans

Plans change.
Sometimes you get to make the choice.
Sometimes the plan gets changed for you.

I am planning the front garden.