Since my last update I have had Fagan (16 year old neighbour) working in the garden for me.  He has cleared the area where Dad will build compost bins, weeded the area around the old bath tub and cleared rocks from between the fence and iron edge that encompasses the garden.  He’s been working really well.  I hope he comes back again!

When we were tramping we met Nicolas and Annick from Belgium.  They have been here for 1 week and have done an amazing things.  They have fixed up all of the paths in the garden area.  This has been a major job.  Paul and I measured the beds and marked out where to put the paths.  Then Nicolas and Annick fastened the iron edges onto the fence so that the iron does not catch on the wheelbarrow.  They then began working path by path.  The first step at each path was to remove soil and plants from the area where the paths should be.  This was a particularly big task around the strawberries and within the main bed – a lot of soil to take from there.  Then any existing tiles and plastic were lifted, cleaned off and relaid.  Wood was then placed between the tiles and the garden beds.  I am so tired of the birds scratching the peastraw out of the garden beds.  Hopefully they can now scratch as much as they like and the straw will mostly stay within the beds.

Now I need to sort out the sprinklers before manuring and peastrawing the beds.

I am really looking forward to working in the garden with these lovely paths.  Unfortunately there will not be enough of the black plastic tiles to cover all of the paths.  I will probably end up getting some wood chips to put on the plastic between the end of the beds and the horse paddock.