school holidays have ended

The burst of cool weather this morning and the return to school has motivated me to get things done.

I did a rough tidy up of the house including vacuuming the lounge room floor which has not been done for maybe 3 weeks.

I made all the beds, put a few of kt's artworks downstairs, tweaked the budget, organized the banking and even managed an uninterrupted chat with uni!

When the weather improves I will do more washing and I will continue gardening, weeding and watering.

I can attach a hose to our water tanks and very slowly and gently water the garden.

This saves me from having to pick up buckets full of water and cart them around... which I have not been keen to do in recent months. Luckily there has been enough rain to keep the garden going ... but now the tanks are full and I think the rain is mostly finished so If I want to have a garden to enjoy once the baby is born I need to pay some attention to it now.

The worms are happy and I used the latest batch of worm castings to plant the dahlias kt bought me for my birthday.

There is a whole stack of capsicums or tomatoes sprouting from the worm castings too... must be all the seeds of the veggie scraps I have been feeding the worms!

As of today I am more pregnant than I have ever been before ... 35 weeks and 3 days!

Rain overnight

It stormed last night and Kt and I had a candle lit dinner (candles were out just in case the power went out).

The thunder and lightning were quite loud so I promised to stay with Kt in her room until she fell asleep.

I had just finished commenting on how I love sleeping when there is rain outside (particularly heavy rain).

Then I rolled over onto my other side (I was lying on a bean bag beside Kt's bed) and promptly fell asleep.

I slept for about an hour to an hour and a half and woke up quite surprised. Kt was silent so I imagine she had been asleep for a while too.

I headed out to watch TV and catch up on my tidying up.

By the time I got to bed I was very tired, but could not get to sleep.

Probably should have gone back to Kt's room!

This morning the pond was about an inch and a half full of water and I drained it with buckets and gave the garden a good watering.

It took me about an hour, but it certainly beats carrying bathwater from Kt's bath down the stairs and all around the garden.

Many things are starting to bloom ... I am amazed how quickly plants respond to rainwater!!!

Some of my plants are flowering for the first time ever, even though I have had them for a few years.

I am surprised to see that the agapanthus I transplanted earlier in the year are actually starting to flower before the established plants that have been in the garden for over a decade!!!

And my blue salvia, which lost all their flowers and i thought were finished their run have bloomed again!

The tanks were 1/4 filled by the rain although there was a leak so we probably had more. At the moment Uni estimates we have 500 litres of water in the tank.

I will have to drain it so that uni can do some repairs ... but I think it will only take another day or two for me to do that.

I also need to mulch the garden while there is moisture in the soil.

Term 3 begins - frontyard fix

Well another term has begun.

Not too many issues this time around ... although Uni did wake up and cook KT a special breakfast of pancakes... that is a pretty good start to any day I think.

We spent the day out in the yard working on improvements.

I was able to weed the garden in about an hour (it used to take days when it was more weed than garden!!!).

Then I painted the two pallets that our garden rainwater tanks will sit on ... and did the side fence (which will be inaccessible once the tanks go in). I also continued on the rest of the side fence. I am into the undergrowth now ... the easy bits have all been painted and I now have to crouch amongst ferns and lean around and behind trees to continue my work ... it is progressing and I intend to do a bit every day while KT is back at school ... until it is completed.

While I worked on that, uni shovelled the last of the gravel out of the pond .. I had done 7/8 of it but uni finished the hardest part. He also cleaned the carport roof and emptied its gutter of probably 10 years worth of leaf litter. In the end he removed two full bucket loads of composted leaves (complete with a good sized plant). We put them in the garden in a patch that needed a bit of extra soil!!

He also cleared the area of the garden where the tanks will stand, and in the next few days will paint the roof of the carport and connect a clean new drainpipe from the carport roof and gutters to the water tanks.

We will then have 2000L water holding capacity which should be plenty for gardening!!!