Busy busy busy

I think the husband is nesting.

It's kind of amusing how boy nesting and girl nesting is quite different - girls clean, boys make a hell of a mess. Mind you, I'm not complaining because mess can be cleaned and the husband is getting a power of stuff done in the backyard and having some sterling ideas on how to do a few things while he's at it.

We sort of have two little areas outside, a small paved area off one of the bedrooms and a small deck area. There's a raised garden by the deck area that the husband built a few years ago, we plonked a couple of fruit trees in then merrily ignored and allowed to fill up with weeds, but the spa pool was sitting on the deck for several years so no one ever really went in that direction and we were completely lazy about keeping it up. The outdoor set was around the corner on the paved area and although you can see the garden, it wasn't reeeally motivation enough to fix it up.

But, we sold the spa pool, moved the outdoor set onto the deck and then we kind of needed to make a plan and tidy things up a bit.

So, here's what's happened.

We (and by 'we' I mean the husband) dug the fruit trees out and replaced them with olive trees. We wanted some shade over the outdoor table, and $30 on olive trees which will give a really nice dappled light by next summer when they've growed (yes, that was intentional. Unlike a book I picked up recently where one of the main characters 'speeded' through a town on the very first page. Heavens. I'm sure speeded isn't a word) up a bit was much cheaper than buying a shade sail which we can't afford.

We've been trying to work out for the last few weeks what to do with the fruit trees because we really didn't want to dump them, and this morning the husband had a flash of inspiration to plant them along the top of our little retaining wall, so we (again, by 'we' I mean he) did that, and it looks really cool. We're kind of hoping that it might put a bit of a barrier up for Cuinn in due course too so he doesn't arse over the side of the retaining wall, but how successful that will be remains to be seen.

Smart border collie staying right out of the way and merrily chewing on a manky old bone, which apparently to dogs is the best thing ever.

Jack investigating lovely compost.

Last but not least, we do still have this little mess is right at the front of the house, bless. The husband now needs to build a new fence to replace the one he leaned on and annihilated.

I'll take photos of the whole lot tomorrow or whenever to show the full effect, once the husband has mowed the lawns and it looks all pretty. At the moment it kinda looks a bit like we've had the Armageddon in our yard.

Obviously I was working hard too while all this was going on ... I was cheering him on, then hiding when he broke his axe, then vacuuming inside because it's blowing like a blowy thing today and one of our windows slammed shut in the wind and exploded all through the lounge. On an awesome scale of one to ten, I managed to get a glazier out here through our insurance company in about 15 minutes by telling them that a) the window is in the front of the house b) reminding them that we live in South Auckland and c) by throwing in for good measure that I'm going to give birth any minute and I really wanted the window fixed as soon as possible ... I have no idea how exactly that got them moving but it did. It was probably less the whole imminent birthing thing and more the thought of an unattended, insecure house in South Auckland and the potential contents claim that did it though, but who am I to complain?

And now, I have chocolate afghans to ice.