Rock tumbler

 We have a lot of petrified wood on our property (and with a toddler I'm sure you can imagine our rock collection was getting rather large) so Ray got me a rock tumbler for Christmas.

It has been fun, we started with the rocks that came in the kit, but more exciting was seeing how the petrified wood turned out, especially the pieces that have quartz through them.

You'll have to excuse the terrible before photos, I wasn't planning to post them on here, but it interests many people more than I realised so I thought I would share here as well.

It is definitely a hobby that requires patience, there are five steps and it takes around one month to complete. A separate garage is also a positive so you don't have to listen to rocks tumbling constantly!

Playground assembled

 I shared about the playground in a previous post, but this time it is to tell you that it is finally assembled and pinned into the ground so it can no longer fall over in our crazy wind!

Since the ground slopes we had to put in a bit of a pad with crusher dust so we'll need a solution for that as our daughter enjoys using it as a sandpit. We also need something soft at the bottom of the slide, she gets up quite a bit of speed if she's not holding our hand. But for now, it's done, and is making our little girl very happy, well, the playgound and the trampoline on the other side of the yard!

Too many garden projects

 As per usual I keep starting new projects which means I'm not getting anything finished!

I've got a crazy paver path going in to meet the gravel driveway of the carport. This is replacing the trip hazard of a very large paver sitting high, then a smaller paver sunk down lower which then creates a step up to the concrete slab along the front of the house! This is clay soil and it's all still settling around the septic tank that was put in before we bought the house. I'll let this settle, but no doubt it will need a proper base. What you can't see is the rocks in this area growing so many weeds that I still need to deal with...

We bought a playground for our daughter's birthday that I still haven't finished assembling - or decided where it's going. It also needs a fence around it as the property is not fully fenced. And after the crazy winds blew it over, we have some repairs to add to that list!

I planted my first 'tree', and it's not fun thanks to the dry, hard clay. For this one I added gypsum and a bag of compost that I forked through while I decide what my plan is going to be for planting future trees. This one is the arrowroot pot guild so the tree is just a mulberry cutting that I poked in the pot right before we moved. You can see it desperately needed to be in the ground (or at least given more water and fertiliser)!

Then there is the pit that was put in before we bought the house. So much bare soil, so many weeds to pull, and a round bale of mulch to finish spreading. I was meant to finish mulching before I started planting flowers, but I had to put some sunflowers in. Oh and then I was given some bulbs that were already sprouting, needless to say there is still a lot to do over the pit, but at least there are pretty flowers now.

And I've also got lots of bare dirt/and weeds where the trucks and excavators were driving. Thankfully we have a grey water sprinkler which I moved around regularly so the grass has covered most of the paths. You can even see our completed project in the background - a fence for Archie! This puppy pen area hasn't grown much so I've added grass seed and left the grey water hose there to help it along - the test patch is very thick and almost ready for it's first hair cut.