hare brained schemes

• Wannabe Farmstead

We hadn’t been long after the last update when we accidentally acquired more stuff. We had returned to Bunnings much sooner than anticipated as we had forgotten to buy replacement heat lamps during the last trip and I decided that I really wanted that Elkhorn fern.

And of course a couple more things we “needed”.

The creeping thyme seeds in the picture is actually the result of another gardening argument. There was some really nice grass when we moved in (after we got it under control as everything was massively overgrown, the house had been unoccupied for many months prior). J was always adamant that he would not under any circumstances ever bother wasting any effort on things that didn’t feed us specifically and it didn’t really matter because the grass didn’t care.

Then came a period of time where we had too many chickens due to a very active “breeding program” (we had no idea what we were doing) and they ate literally everything and turned the place into a dustbowl.

After putting up with that nonsense for way too long (mostly because I did not have the time and energy to deal with it and the garden was supposed to be J’s thing) I spelled out why we needed ground cover and we agreed to try the creeping thyme as it apparently smells nice and is tough enough to deal with some foot traffic.

We planted that one a few weeks ago and some of it is coming up now, a lot of it was not in the furrow J traced for it as the seeds are microscopic and it was a bit windy when he was trying to plant them and then who knows where they ended up when he tried watering them in but near enough was good enough. We might try sprouting the next lot first and then transplanting it out.

^{or we might yolo again}

We also finally got the white paint that we needed to repaint over the stupid asbestos and some lavender because it smells nice and bees like lavender.

^{then some idiot forgot PPE was a thing when hyperfocusing on “gently hose flaky paint off with garden hose” as advised by the parent who works in OHS, hopefully I don’t get mesothelioma x_x}

I “found” a box of seeds on top of a cupboard in the laundry (ie I knew it was there but didn’t really register) and went through it. As suspected, J has kind of been semi-impulse buying seeds on most Bunnings trips over the years without checking to see what he had first. I did a seed inventory in the bag notebook and then pulled out everything that could be planted in autumn and ordered them by when the seeds “expired” (the two rightmost piles are sow by/before late 2026 and 2027 but had different stuff from the earlier piles).

The fluffy orange asisstant “helped” afterwards by flattening the piles.

We had a chicken fence in the backyard at one stage to try to keep them contained in one side of their current area so we could have vege patches on the other side, apparently it collapsed one day and the chickens were then just hopping over it (according to Eldest as I don’t remember this) so J eventually took the chicken wire down but left the “gate” post up (probably because it’s cemented in). I suggested (and by that I mean said this is what’s happening) that we rebuild the fence again and try to keep them out of that area for a bit while we start the bee and chicken garden which involves planting the lavender that’s currently still in the pot we bought it in nicely and following @beelzael’s suggestion (which quite frankly we were going to do anyway out of sheer laziness XD) for the chicken forage and beneficial insect mixes and quite possibly the “expired” seeds depending on how much faith we have in them and whether or not the seeds have been treated.

Then we commence a frantic race against chickens as after the mixes look big enough we’ll buy more packets, let the chickens back into the area and we’ll keep throwing seeds around until we have to do it less or enough flowers or seeds passing through chicken digestive tracts somehow survive to self reseed.

I have been telling J that the beehive needs to be moved to a tree stump in another part of the yard before it collapses as it has been slowly tilting for the last few years. He went from insisting it was fine and would never fall over to suggesting we just make a little concrete bed for it (I kerbstomped that idea hard) and him realising when we were showing his parents all the new stuff in the garden when they visited recently that the top boxes are starting to slide off.

The tree stump is going to be the new base for the beehive. The lavender plant is going in the corner and the chicken and insect garden will start immediately around it.

Youngest helped position and straighten out the sleeper bed and that’s currently glacially getting filled with larger sticks and leaves and things whenever we get around to doing garden cleanup. It still needs to be star picketed in.

More recently I came up with the “brilliant” idea to do a pvc pipe hydroponics on that fence and found this website with this manageable looking design which should theoretically suit better than what I had in mind.

^{it may also end up being a straight small pond}

At some point I thought it would be a fantastic idea to excavate the back path as it hasn’t been maintained in a year or so. It required shovel, rake and broom in that order. I did not think to take a before pic when I started and only took these ones because I was so upset about doing it that I told my friends I needed someone to appreciate it and they appreciated it for me XD One of them was even kind enough to say that it was motivating her to continue uncovering her back path.

^{that handy dandy bathtub is not getting converted into an aquaponics because even though it’s been sitting there for years now I still want to renovate the utility bathroom and put it in there, I’m still dirty that it didn’t get put back in the main bathroom which is what I specifically requested and basically got told no becuase the people doing the work who don’t even live here were too old to climb in and out of it?! And I’m not allowed to complain because most of it was done relatively cheaply with the help of family friends with the correct qualifications}

The house painting eventually got finished (J and Eldest completed the last coat on the last two walls as I woke up with a killer headache that annoyingly persisted all day and a chunk of the night) and the Easter lilies came back.

They were here when we got here and we joke about how they thrive on neglect as we have done absolutely nothing at all for them and they have persisted where everything else in their garden bed died. I don’t know if a lot of the soil has eroded or if the bulbs just got bigger but I suddenly became aware of the megabulb there (there’s a lot of large bulbs squished together) so when it stops being a surface level plant I might have a go at separating them out and giving them all a bit more space and hopefully won’t kill them with the attempt at helping.

Especially seeing as at least one of them has ended up over here and is definitely getting moved back into the garden bed.

Most of the plants from floral experiment #1 have survived and grown bigger. Two of the colourful leaved ones that I think are Coleus (the label disappeared into the aether) haven’t, one I’m not sure why and the other one I’m genuinely surprised is still alive along with all the other survivors in the patio bed which was frequently overturned by a chicken we nicknamed “Satan” because long after the two other hens that were also jailbreaking had gotten the memo and wisely stayed on their side of the fence, she persisted in hopping basically over the house (sometimes she’d jump the fence but most of the time she was going up the currently defunct aquaponics onto the shed roof onto the tree onto the house roof and jumping off the other side).

Satan had worked out the Alyssums are tasty chicken treats and eaten them all, then had a go at some of the other plants in the patio bed including one of the Impatiens which is now literally hanging on by a leaf.

The silver lining of that is that Aeris the Puppy learned how to herd chickens.

The tree bed (right next to the patio bed) is also a good flower garden apparently as everything in there is doing well (except for that one Coleus which isn’t growing for some reason but also isn’t dying and the three Alyssums that got eaten by the chicken).

I’m currently trying to nurse the patio bed along but may end up having to replant it which will set back the plans for the driveway liner.

Speaking of plans, I’m dropping the hare-brained schemes into a list and seeing if I can get any done before next update.

plans

• rebuild chicken divider fence
• plant bee garden (lavender bush, first round of chicken foraging mix and beneficial insect mix)
• move beehive and birdbath (which is primarily easy water source for the bees) into bee garden
• replant birdbath pockets
• try to let everything grow out a little bit before allowing chickens back in there (may be a struggle with Satan)
• build vertical garden on chicken divider fence
  • small pond or aquaponics pod
  • pvc pipes
  • guppies
• continue reseeding chicken foraging mix and beneficial insect mix over the entirety of the chicken area every few weeks indefinitely or until it looks like it’s able to reseed and regrow itself before getting completely destroyed
• relocate and set up aquaponics properly
  • climbing frame?
  • butterfly koi
  • shubunkin
  • may have to replace one of the ponds
• dig out tree stumps
• mark out where the granny flat is going so we don’t plant anything there
• attempt to transplant the apparently immortal Crapemyrtle to where the bigger tree stump was
• sprout creeping thyme and try transplanting when big enough to be visible to the naked eye
• separate Easter lilies

side quests

• desktop aquaponics
  • Youngest’s old fish tank setup
  • really small dwc raft or materials to make one
  • betta
  • see where neighbour got shrimp and snails from or if they have a population excess to rehome

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License