Smoked Out
It's been a busy few days here at J Road. We got back on Tuesday after a pretty uneventful drive back. Well I say uneventful, actually we did stop in Hamilton to catch up with Ben and Di which was really nice. Hamilton Gardens, I've heard lots about them but never been. They're quite amazing really, really nice little gardens, we went into Gate 2 which seemed to be the one for the kiddies to play at. And we had to stop a number of times for Beth to go and Pee. But we got back and the house was in perfect condition, the people who had been staying here obviously looked after it well.
We've had a busy week at home. Mostly stuff in the garden - pulling out all the weeds in the front garden (there were heaps and heaps) and totally cleaning up the little Rose Garden bit. Then there were piles and piles of leaves and sticks and stuff, it'd have taken about 5 trailer loads to the tip. So yesterday morning (after having applied for and been given a fire permit over the phone) I set the huge pile of sticks in the Chicken Run ablaze. I'd spent the previous day deconstructing the massive pile of sticks, keeping anything that we could just use for kindling or to fuel the fire. No point having a massive blaze wasting lots of useful wood when we have a fire. So once I did that, the pile was looking good so I set it on fire. Bill (my neighbour) helped me keep it under control and throwing all the various bits of crap onto it. I had so many piles - it took me ~3 hours to load everything onto it and get it all burnt. But finally it was done. The whole gardens and grounds look a lot better now, I burnt up so much stuff.
I generated heaps of smoke, lots of ash too. I had to keep a hose going for a while there to ensure that none of the embers caught. I'd also gone around to all my neighbours and told them what was going on so that no one got too crabby. People seemed to appreciate the heads up. During the burn Colin came over and told me that I should be careful, he's been threatened with a $10,000 fine. But I'd already organised a permit, so I was OK. I told him how easy it is to get a permit and he said he might do that.
Oh yes and the day before my chainsaw got a real workout, I went through 2 lots of petrol and 1 lot of chain oil. Which is more than I've ever used before. I'm still a bit ashamed my chainsaw is just called a "Mini" though. Anyway, it's proven very handy, I'm glad I got it.
Got rid of the windows that have been hanging around since forever. Put them on Facebook Freebie page and someone came around to get them about 2 hours later. It's a great way to get rid of stuff that's still got some value but you can't be arsed putting on Trademe.
I think that's about it really. Really happy with how the garden is looking at the moment. Oh we've had 4 nice big cucumbers from the greenhouse and are just starting to get a few tomatoes. So that's good.