Nearly spring

It's nearly spring!  The magnolia next door is flowering and all sorts of wee things are coming up in the garden

We still have the big rabbit, despite efforts to give her away (I finally have permission from her owner to find her a new home).  She's eating my parsley, and I have found my philadelphus and a gazania eaten off to an inch above ground level.  She does the rounds of the other rabbits every day, socialising, but spends the longest time with Sable, the boy.

Bryony has a new wee girl bunny Licorice who is a bit jumpy but very curious

Hannah had her last Pinata this year

and seafood paella for the birthday tea

Raised beds

Our latest projects have required a lot of digging.  First, we paid the kids (per bucketful) to dig out this hole for a woodshed (I posted about this briefly earlier in the year)

It's at the bottom end of the vege garden, this photo from March.

The other project, starting at the top end of that vege garden, was to convert it to raised beds.  They are untreated macrocarpa, 5.5m x 1.1m outside measurement.  By the time we've finished all 7 we'll have 37.8 sqm. of vege garden.  That will be nice.

Box 1

Box 2 and 3

We didn't think we'd have a hope of even half-filling them but as it turns out the garden slopes upward as it moves away from the driveway and we've had to move quite a lot of dirt to make them level.  It's mostly black clay, so we'll probably buy in compost to fill in the top half.  I used up all our compost on the first bed, which has shallots and garlic in it.  Mum gave me some lime which I'll sprinkle on too.