Overdue update!

Today I thought I'd put some time aside before I start anything else, to update my blog on a few things.

Recently I laid some turf down for our back lawn, it was the first time I had ever tried doing this job, but it seemed to go quite well.

I have had to go back up to twice a day to water some patches that have dried out, but it seems to have been worth the time spent, as the odd strand of green has been seen poking out of the straw coloured turf.

R.I.P Cherie

Unfortunately we found Cherie dead in the paddock the other day - I had let them out in the morning, as is usual, and when I went to put them away, I found poor Cherie lying down.

It seems she may have had the same thing happen to her as one of our older chickens some time ago - although my medical skills are limited, there were no marks on her, and no feathers littering the grass around her - so she must have gone very quick which is a good thing.

Cherie was one of five rescue chickens we picked up last year, and she was especially endearing as she had a twisted beak, which is why we named her after Cherie Blair!

She was one of the few hens that let me pick her up, more than the others anyway, so it is especially sad that she would be the one to go.

Rest in peace Cherie - we'll always remember you!

Kane rises the ranks!

Kane has been doing really well at Little Ninjas, he seems to have a natural flair for martial arts.

Well the other week he successfully passed the grading to give him his new belt - the yellow belt with a green stripe.

Every training session he goes to he receives a tag on his belt, and every time he gets 8 tags on his belt, he is eligible to do the grading for the next belt. Kane now does 2 sessions a week, and gets 2 tags a week, this has cut down the time he takes to get a new belt - not that it's rushed or anything - the test is quite comprehensive for the next belt.

Here he is in a fighting stance, with his new belt!

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)