And in other news...

In between visits to Canberra, I'm loving living in our new house.

David is working like a fiend in the garden and has been project managing earthworks and the beginnings of mulching and planting.  We have a general landscape plan drawn up tentatively on the whiteboard in the study. Some screen plantings have gone in and some herbs. We are beginning to green up the house with indoor plants.

These shots show what was achieved last week while I was in Canberra - the big machine came and created a land bridge from the deck side of the house to the dam, with buried pipes to cope with the dam overflow. We have also had huge swales made along the contours of the land, a permaculture strategy to harvest water falling on the soil by coralling it to seep in rather than allowing it to run away. The land has quite a slope in places so this should help do away with the need for supplementary watering. Next step will be to mulch the parts we want to plant into. Much of the block will be natural grass for a while yet. Landscaping is a long term project, but it's what we love to do. A bit daunting at this stage of proceedings, but we will get there. Eventually.

(Above) This is a circular driveway created out of road base. The plan is to put bitumen on top of this. This plan is subject to taking a deep breath and borrowing just a little more money.

This photo shows the future lawn area off the deck and also the work done around the dam to improve the security of the dam wall and to pretty it up a bit.  The ducks approve. Large numbers of them now parade daily around that newly created flat bit on the dam with big smiles on their little quacky faces.

In a desperate attempt to clear enough space in the garage to fit the car again, plus make some money for the aforesaid landscaping, we had a garage sale on the weekend to "reuse and recycle" some of our stuff from storage that we no longer need or want. It was a lot of preparation, but it went really well. This time I allowed enough time to put a price (low) on everything and most of it sold. They like a bargain around here. It was nice to see stuff going to genuine low income buyers rather than dealers.

 The "before" shot at 7am.

The "after" shot at 3pm the following day. Not much left and today we took most of that to the "Green Shop" at the tip.

One nice thing about this new life is that David now has time for mates. Last week, he and two other botanically minded chaps went on a field trip to Coorabakh, collecting seed for propagating. Judging by the photos, it is a beautiful part of the world.

This a rare banksia.

And this is a rare bird, tragically deceased. It is the endangered regent bowerbird. Never seen one in life, but they are around. Our neighbour Tim recently spotted one at David and Chris' Landcare site on Diamond Beach.

Yesterday we were delighted to have Linda and Phil stay a night after a weekend at their favourite campsite near Seal Rocks. They brought us birthday presents - mine was some lavender smellies and David's was this fellow: "Horl" with an umlaut on the "o", pronounced "Huuwlll" with a Germanic expression on one's face. Horl is a gnome who observes and comments on one's efforts in the garden.