I have little days here and there in my touring schedule where I am making an effort to return home to help out with the kids... and to do a bit more on the garden so that it starts to look less like a muddy bogpit and more like a home! This little patch of work was done on the last visit back... and it was to plant the little fast growing plants on the side of the garage which will later grow to be a screen that will shield the garage from the road and from the elements.

... but to install those three little plants... I have to remove the existing little fledgling trees that are already planted there. My plan (well... my wife's plan... I'm just the facilitator of the plans... ) is to move these three existing ones to the outer rock wall where they can serve as another buffer shield when they get a little bit bushier... and they will also help retain the soil in that area after all the greenery in that location got taken out by the excavator!

Getting these guys out from the soil was pretty tricky... going carefully around the stem of the tree-let with a mattock (seriously, one of the better tool purchases I've made so far!) was the order of the day... taking care to dig a trench around without damaging the root system...

Then, levering out with a regular spade... going around and gently prying it loose. A good hard stomp on the shovel would definitely break it loose, but it would also snap much of the root structure... and these ones I did want alive... just transplanted, not killed!

So, with the first centre tree-let uprooted... I plonked down a hole around the centre top shelf of the rock wall for it to be moved into. Again, this was a job for the mattock to break up the soil, and then getting the shovel in afterwards after the soil was loosened up. I can't believe that I never owned a mattock before!

Oddly enough, very little of the existing soil came with the roots of the newly naked tree-let! I was expecting to bring more of it over... I hope it will be okay!

... and in it goes, along with a healthy dose of water as well! Ah... you can see that some of our other plants are flowering quite nicely... a tough earlier than expected, but in a nice healthy yellow bloom.. the smell is really quite enticing! I can also hear lots of bees buzzing around, I'm pretty sure that they have set up a little hive up in one of hte bigger trees, I hear lots of buzzing from up there!

Meanwhile, I was given instructions to plant the little bushy fast growers (I'm sure that they have real plant names... but I'm not so good with that!) in a row about a metre or so apart. Mission accomplished... straight from the pot to the soil. The other two tree-lets, I have left in for the moment.. I didn't need the space that they are in, and I ran out of time to move them... perhaps on the next free day, but I think the next pressing thing is to move a good deal of the soil that is sitting in a pile back into the garden and grounds before it all washes away in rain.

It turns out that we are likely to need a few more of the fast growers... the three alone won't quite be enough to cover the garage. I think that we could use another three, definitely another two at least... possibly a few more in case we want to have a better coverage to just beyond the pillars of the garage.

So, I will have to fix up this bit with some of the excess soil. Along the line of the new pipes, the soil has collapsed a bit as the soil seeped back into the gravel that surrounded the pipes. I was expected, but I will need to raise the level of the ground again... lots of trips with the wheelbarrow to bring all that soil from the back of the yard to the front!

Meanwhile, this will be another little project that needs tending to. Around one corner, I will have to extend that ag-pipe further around the bend to collect the shallow part where the water pools and turns the ground into mud. I have more than enough length, but I will need to dig a shallow trench that I will need to line with gravel as well. Not going to be the most fun thing to do by hand... but at least it isn't too far!

I will also need to order in some gravel first... not point having a trench that just gets filled with water!

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