Yesterday was supposed to be a day of getting stuff done... and I did manage a good deal, but it really got quite bogged down with administrative sorts of things which was a good deal less exciting than it sounds! However, at the end of the day... I did make sure that I had some time to just get some gardening stuff done before I had to cook dinner and then travel out the next day on a stupidly early flight.

The most enjoyable part was planting in the little budding herbs with my youngest daughter. I did the holes, and then she would fill them back in after the herbs were in... and she thought it was hilarious that I kept forgetting to put water in the hole before putting the herbs in. Actually, I remembered the first time... and then managed to keep forgetting for each of the next ones, and she would keep asking "did you remember the water?".

Anyway, this was the easy part of the gardening... nice soft and rich soil, combined with relatively shallow holes meant that very little muscle power was required for this! If my older daughter was home, I would have delegated this completely over to the kids...

Anyway, we now have two Rosemary, two Thyme, and one Parsley down in the ground now... and I'm hoping that they will survive the rest of winter and start giving us lots of herbs for cooking, and a really pleasant smell when we enter our house!

This is the worst part in our garden... It regularly gets waterlogged and muddy, and the clay is crazily clogged and hard. Actually, I'm not entirely sure that it ever dries out at the moment... years of having the water just flow to this area... from the roof and surrounds, due to crapped up stormwater (now fixed) and being a low point on the block.

The other day, I had sprinkled gypsum on the top... but found that the clay was next to impossible to turn with a shovel. So, I had given up (I also needed to get to cooking...), and was hoping that the gypsum would start breaking up the clay from the top surface... and then I could have another go at turning the soil after that.

Well... it might just be all in my mind (probably was...), but it did seem easier to turn this particular afternoon after a light rain. On the other hand, I had exchanged my turning tool for a pitchfork on the advice of a relative, and it was much easier to get the fork-tines into the ground and then turn a chunk of clay over.

So, the patch was successfully turned, and the surface gypsum was now mixed in to a depth of about 10 centimetres... which is a start!

... but I figured it was a chance to get more gypsum into the soil... and I did another surface scatter which I immediately turned over in the newly loosened soil.

I was quite happy that this afternoon, my wife had started doing a similar thing in a different part of the garden... and she was QUITE surprised about how solid the clay was! Haha... so, I wasn't just making it up!

... with the soil turned and the gypsum mixed in. It was time to move to the next chore that I wanted to have done before I left on the plane. Moving some of the large rocks from the front of the house to form the base of the retaining wall at the back. My wife has a bit of a bad back at the moment, and I don't want her moving anything large and heavy... so, I said that I would lay the big ones down, and she can stack the little ones.

... and here we go, another metre and a bit which should last the four days that I'm away! In a little bit I will have to start finding rocks... I know that people are trying to get rid of them on gumtree! So, I might be driving around picking up rocks in a ute!

... and I'm looking at IBCs to start making wicker beds for growing veggies! My father-in-law is going to teach me how!

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