That’s right, you guessed it – you don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to know the answer is: NOTHING. However that’s how I’ve spent most of the weekend. Now wouldn’t it be great if this post was about the joys of spring? About how nice it is to be spending more time out geocaching, enjoying the warmer and longer days and looking forward to daylight savings being only 3 weeks away? However we’ve been experiencing the down side of spring. Last weekend was spent cleaning, mostly inside the house. Specifically, mostly ceilings, shelves, things that sit on shelves and accumulate dust and gunge, and the car. This weekend, being the rock chick I am who really knows how to plan for unbridled fun, we had a skip bin delivered. Woo-hoo!
Saturday started off looking at the task at hand and instantly wishing the weekend was just over. I was staring at a lovely heap of old prunings, clippings, etc that blackberries have been growning up through. Joy, oh joy. So, the initial action plan had Scott pulling things off the heap, Julian loading the skip bin, and me cutting up blackberry whips – many of which were several metres long.Â
We were filling the skip up pretty quickly, so after a couple goes at getting in and jumping up and down on it, it was time to implement a new strategy: the mulcher. Much of the stuff we were putting in the skip we had been unable to mulch when it was green (or, embarassingly, was cut before we had the mulcher – I won’t mention here when I got it!). As everything was nice and dry now, there were some pretty big branches that just went straight through! Great stuff! And, of course, the garden can always use some mulch – although spreading mulch in some areas of the garden just couldn’t happen as it was too windy. The first couple bags of mulch went on the new planting of raspberries. (Yup – that’s right. We’re killing ourselves getting rid of feral blackberries, but willingly planting out raspberry canes. Go figure.) The last couple went on the side garden – which in the past few months has become quite feral indeed!
Did I mention the wind? Hobart gets WINDY in spring, and as we’re on a hillside we certainly get it full blast at our place. And the spot where we were mulching, on the cement area immediately outside the back door, gets swirls of winds as it whips around the house. Needless to say, we’ll all be finding grit and gunge in our eyes and ears for the next couple weeks!
A little before the sun was to set, Lottie and I headed out to do some geocaching. We deserved SOME fun, and the most exercise Lottie had had during the day was when she would escape from the back garden to remind me to take a ‘break’. So first we headed out to DnA!’s Recipe Exchange. I knew the valley it is in would be lovely just after the sun left (I’d sweated off my sun screen long ago), and we got there at the perfect time. This was what spring was about! The wattle are in bloom, the birds are singing. Beautiful! The cache was found, recipes were exchanges (I added Mole Verde and Chocolate Mousse), and we headed off. The sun was just setting – and this is when I realised than I’d put down my glasses case when I went to put Lottie’s lead on her. So I only had sunnies with me and didn’t dare head off for the other 2 caches I wanted to do. I could see night falling, and me driving home trying to choose whether it was better to drive at night in sun glasses or without any glasses. Not a great choice.
So we went home, planning to be good girls and give up caching for the day. But then I got there, had a look at how much we’d done, and grabbed my glasses! Lottie and I were soon back on the road, and found 2 caches by a new cacher, Ready to Join the Fight and another bridge. Hooray! We stopped off for some wine on the way home, and upon our arrival I took a bath. Bliss! You wouldn’t believe where I was finding bits of shrubs!
This morning, Sunday, we woke up feeling the pain of a job well done. And were faced with the fact the job wasn’t over. Sigh. After coffee and brekkie, Scott was soon out working, and I joined him soon after. He was filling the skip, I was mulching. And mulching. Which is pretty miserable in a wind storm. But we got most of it done, and while writing this a rain shower has come and gone – so you guessed it, Lottie and I will soon be out trying to grab a cache or two!
Flickr is being devilishly slow right now, so I’ve only uploaded a few things. If you’re interested in photos of garden work, and really who isn’t when you’re not the one doing the work, check back tomorrow as I’ve only uploaded a few.
 