Just imagine this. Kim with there with her still healing foot, and me with my sore back, out in the garden today doing a few simple tasks.
We fertilised all the fruit trees in the front orchard with a handful of blood and bone and watered it in well. Then we raked back some mulch in the two front garden beds that we grew vegetables in last summer and planted some lucerne seeds (couple of hundred in each bed), so that we can cut it back every so often for chook food, green mulch, greens for the compost. The great thing about lucerne is that it is a perennial, that goes dormant in winter, and has very deep roots that bring those well hidden nutrient to the surface for other plants, in this case fruit trees.
Then Kim thought it would be good to remove a limb from that was overhanging our roof at the front. So, I had to go and fetch the pruning saw, clippers and wheelbarrow. She managed to carry the ladder to the tree and started sawing. I thought that I could see a disaster looming, so climbed the ladder to ensure the the cut she made diverted the falling limb to a part of the garden that would cause the lease amount of damage. Well, as luck would have it, no problems and it came down gracefully. With Kim doing all the heavy lifting, we cut it into wheelbarrow sized chunks and added the big limb to the chickens playground. I am sure they will be pleased. It was quite a sight to watch her manoeuvre the wheelbarrow through the gates, with me holding back the branches so we could fit through the gates. What a pair of intrepid gardeners we were. We tidied that lot up and put the tools away.
Kim watered the veggie patch for me, and I got on my hands and knees and collected some parsley and basil seed to plant in a few weeks time. Whilst I was down there, I also did a spot of weeding, and pulling out spent lettuce plants and gave them to the chooks. The chooks loved all the fresh greens and had a good old cackle and scratch around.
Kim pruned the standard yellow rose bush that didn’t loose its leaves this year, and trimmed up a few other plants like the ivy around the garden lamppost. I planted some more lettuce seedlings that I had growing into the pots I pulled the old spent lettuce out of and tried my hand at propagating some mint buy cutting off a few healthy sprigs and plonked them in a pot to see it they would take root. If it works I will do the same for the sage. Speaking of sage, we trimmed back all the old growth and I tied it into a big bunch with some jute and hung it on the front door. The whole house just smelt of the wonderful herb.
