What a sod!

No - I'm not swearing at anyone - I'm just describing what sort of job I did yesterday!

Now, you may remember I worked very hard at lifting the old turf off our back lawn at our old house...

...well yesterday I spent the day lifting sods and carefully placing them in a weird sort of puzzle on the bare ground.

I was told by the nice man who delivered to me from Perfect Turf that I should lay the turf round the edges of the garden and work to them - that way I'd get a nice clean edge along the border, rather than a jagged line where I'd cut them in.

I started nice and quickly, I think it was because it was a new and exciting job that I'd never done before. Either that or someone had secreted a strange chemical into the turf, cos either way it seemed fun!

I decided (all by myself!) that I was going to lay the turfs in a brick formation, this seemed effective and gave me straight lines that I could work to. I hadn't bothered to set out wires or string, mainly because I couldn't be bothered - but mainly because I didn't have any wire or string to set out.

Now then, I was a little stuck for something to cut the turf with, but I found in a kitchen draw a table knife, so with this in hand I set out to trim that turf!





I had a break to go pick Kane up from school, then I went straight back to the matter in hand.



After finishing the job at last, I plugged the hose in and gave the whole lot a lovely long drink, to give it a good start in life.

Job done!

Ocassionally I find causes that I want to support, and this is one of them. We took some ex batts in last year, and so I feel it's good to give something extra back.

The below rescue is in Norfolk.

The following is what I have been asked to copy and post on this blog;

Little Hen Rescue desperately need homes for the last remaining battery hens of a farm due to shut down. The slaughter man has been booked by the farmer for 29th June, these hens will be slaughtered unless homes are found ASAP. After spending 18 miserable months of their short lives in a hell hole, never seeing daylight or grass, never knowing what the sun feels like on their backs, they will be held by the legs and roughly put into crates, loaded up like rubbish and killed. All for cheap crappy eggs.

Many co-ordination points have and are being set up to accommodate as wide an area for re homing as possible. If you can give a home to some very needy hens, or can help in other ways ie putting up posters or donating, please contact LHR @ http://www.littlehenrescue.co.uk/
If you have been thinking about re homing some ex battery hens but are unsure, please feel free to join the Ex Battery Hens Forum for very friendly and helpful advice http://www.exbatteryhens.com/

If you are a blogger, please pop a post on your blog to help raise awareness.

Please, support LHR and help them to get these hens out.

Many thanks for reading,

Stiggy

To turf or not to turf.

We're sprucing up the house we've just moved from, so we can put it on the market, one of the jobs that we had designated to a pro was the garden.

Since the grass hadn't been cut since last October, it had grown long, bent over and made clumps all over the lawn. Unfortunately, the areas underneath the clumps had been starved of light, and the grass had died away, leaving random lumps and bumps...

...not to mention the size of the ant hills - which stood like mini volcanoes amongst the grass!

We decided to get some quotes for re turfing the lawn - that is, to take up all the old grass and top layer of soil, and replace it all with lovely new turf. After we had spoken to a few people, we received a quote to do 140m2, which we felt was way over what we expected, so we took the decision for me to do it myself. In the meanwhile, I cut the grass to see how bad the problem was.





The problem was, I found a turf website that could deliver all the turf for the job for 1/10 of the quote - and the machine to do the job was only cheap for 2 days - so onto the phone I went to organise the machine to be delivered.



After the turfing machine had been delivered, it took me a little while to figure out how to use it, adjust it and make it work for me, but luckily it didn't take very long at all! (I seem to have an affinity with anything with a petrol engine!)



I decided to do only the main part of the lawn, as the bank was too difficult to get the machine on, and anyway - it's not a well used area of grass.



It took me two afternoons (6 hours) to take the turf off the areas I wanted to, which I was very pleased about, as I had never used one of these machines before.

After all the turf was taken up, I had to order a skip, then another afternoon was spent moving all the old stuff into the skip.

Once everything had been cleared and raked to get the nasty stones and lumps out the way, I went round with my weed sprayer and attacked any weeds I could find.



The two tons of topsoil came the next day, and I set about wheelbarrowing the soil to the back garden.

The quote we received was for a group of men to work for about 3 days to re turf our garden...

...had I been able to work full days at the house I would have been able to do the job - on my own - in just 3 days!

I still have a small area to put top soil on before I order the actual turf, which I'll do today, but the really back breaking work is done now - so I'm happy!

While I was working, I found quite a few slow-worms. Most were small, but one was quite large.





I love snakes (never felt like owning one though!), and although I would never expect to actually see a snake in the wild over here in the UK, it was nice to at least be able to hold a slow-worm, and see it's little tongue darting in and out - tasting the air around it...



...I wonder what it thought of me!

(Jo caught me resting and having a drink after figuring out the turf machine)