It's nearly the end of February . . . already!

It seems as though not much time has gone by . . . until I see the date of my last post! Then I realise 4 months have sped by.

Christmas and New Year have come and gone. We've been away camping, come home and then Locket and I took Brains back up to Auckland. He was best man at his best friend's wedding at the beginning of February, and soon begins his second year at Unitec. We stayed with E & E at Waihi Beach for a couple of days as well and it was great to catch up with cuzzies too. Especially T & C who were over from Old Blighty (England!).

Late last year I was chatting with our lovely neighbour about plants and discovered she had some Chatham Island Forget-me-nots. C said she was dividing them and when I commented that I was wanting to grow some she offered to bring me some. They were quite wee and fragile, so I carefully potted them up and they took off pretty well.

I was checking on them early in January and noticed a fair bit of one leaf was gone . . . then the next day the entire leaf had been eaten!

Not so easy to tell from this angle . . .they're looking pretty healthy.

There it is, the telltale sign! The leaf eaten leaving just the stalk! A hunt was made and on the underside of another leaf I found the very hungry caterpillar!

A good size, and I found a new home for it on a nasturtium leaf. I do not know if it eats nasturtiums, but I figured it was a good place, and it would hopefully find the food it liked if it didn't eat nasturtiums!

Alas, alack, the patio has grown a good crop of weeds. They need to be dealt to. Most likely they will get a liberal sprinkling of salt.

Time marched on and the weeds and grass grew prolifically. I hadn't been up the back much since October and when I ventured up there on Tuesday of this week I found it more of a wilderness than ever. To the point that it was quite overwhelming!

Since there is a whole lot to do to get it under control I decided to try and commit an hour a day to the outdoor areas. Why an hour? I have seen 15 minutes suggested, or even 30 minutes. The problem with that is by the time I've got changed into older clothes, put my boots on and gone up the back I'd rather stay a reasonable time. Partly because to get up to the greenhouse area is 20 plus steps for a start. If I go right up the back it's another 30 plus steps.

Once I've got on top of the outdoor areas I might get away with 15 minutes of maintenance in an area but for now an hour gives a decent length of time to show some results.

On Tuesday I popped into the greenhouse and decided I'd just try and clear the right hand side bed. Which has never really been utilised much.

I started and this is when I've done a tiny bit . . . and then remembered to take some photos! It's a good record for me to keep as I can see what I've done, which encourages me.

This is what the rest of it looks like! Weeds, ferns, a bit of potting mix in a bag and lots of rubbish! The blue bin holds the chook pellets.

A different view to show how well the ferns grow . . . but unforutnately for them they're not where I want them to be. The black netting is used over the garden beds to keep the chooks off the gardens when I actually grow veges.

And here it is around an hour later! I potter, work sedately and steadily. This soil is pretty compacted though and needs a good dig over. It was raining while I was doing this and it was quite lovely to be pottering away in the greenhouse with the rain falling on the roof.

It had been raining the night before and the water tank outside the greenhouse was full to overflowing. So I decided to use some of the water and liberally watered this side of the garden. The tank filled up again fairly quickly.

The other side, which I hadn't had to do anything to. Looking from the left: under the basket is a bucket full of rain water. I covered it to keep bugs out and I'll most likely tip it on the garden soon. Next the chook bin and watering can. The sacks are old chook pellet ones and they're quite handy for putting stuff in. The one with the red top holds all the rubbish I found, the other one has all the weeds and vegetation I wanted to get rid of.

A view of the other end.

The other end on the other side.

Now to decide what to grow! Watch this space  😀