2016 started with a hot summer and the gift of a small shed from a friend of Dad’s and a whole lot of paving from my brother, Richard. The pavers covered the back garden area and provided edging for all the garden beds out the front. There were so many that we even gave a stack away!
Marlon and I laid the pavers over a very hot Christmas period. Dad came and showed us how to get our levels and helped us get the sand level – he’d done that job many times before. Once we all had about 8 metres laid, Lon and I started to do about 1 square metre at a time, then resting for the rest of the day! It was so hot. We even invested in some shade cloth to cover us.
We didn’t want overflow all over our freshly laid pavers, so Marlon and I dug up a few to put in a drainage pipe. As is usually the way, what we thought would be an afternoon job turned into a nightmare when we discovered that the downpipe from the house roof wasn’t actually connected and the pipe that it was meant to run into ran backwards, to below the average drainage height. I’ll never know how it hadn’t eaten out a huge hole underground.
About this time, friends gave us a pond, which we put at the back and connected to a solar pump.
Next came filling the paths with gravel. It took about 2 tonnes, so was backbreaking labour by Marlon, Steven from next door and I over a couple of days but it looked so beautiful when it was finished.
After a bit, it was all looking organised and tidy and just a little greener than when we started. We could even walk from place to place without tripping up or getting our shoes dirty.
Our first livestock in the garden were Quails. Two males and five females. They went into the Quail house that I had made by joining two donated pet houses together.
