Little by Little

As I go back to work next week, its been full steam ahead in the garden. Thankfully we've had rain and cooler temperatures, but still, its dirty,sweaty work.  And the other gift is the help I've had from Beau and Greg, who are taking it in turns (wise men). So the top swale where the apple and macadamia trees are was next on the list.  The grass was as high as your shoulders and needed the same treatment as the lower swale had just had.  So we stockpiled manure and mulch and got to it.  Here's what it looked like when we started.

There really are trees in there and surprisingly, they have done fine without any watering.  Must be the shade. But ultimately this variety of grass will choke them so it had to go.  And it doesn't make for a nice wander through the forest.  So here we are in the first hour or two

That's Greg wishing he'd stayed at home and our dog Cleo not wanting to miss out in a nice back scratch in the grass.  Then after a long hard day of sweating in 32 degree heat, here's where we got to

We managed to take all the roots out, dig in manure, water and mulch the first half of the swale.  The second half had the grass dug up but still needed those tricky roots taken out.  So that was done the following day and here's how it looks now with a bit of planting started.

I planted some lomandra grass on the slope there to hold it in place when it rains.  I'm also planning to put some comfrey above that as well.  Since then I've put in about a dozen pumpkin plants that I grew from seed (heritage varieties of course) and will let them ramble.  I've got a bumper crop from the other areas I've planted out that I'm not fussed if they set pumpkin or not.  I've got some sweet potato to plant as well. It had rained overnight when I was planting and so you can see the swales at work.  The water had collected at the lowest point, underneath the apple tree, and was busy soaking in the next day.  Here's a close up

The swale we did before Christmas is looking good as things are starting to grow. Little by little.....