Today was a crazily wet and windy day in Canberra and the surrounds... as I've mentioned before in previous garden journals, we have recently had our stormwater and sewage redone after the trees decided to take up residence in the old pipes. Today was a trial by fire of the new system as it absolutely poured down in Canberra... and the stormwater held up fine with no problems. However, the guttering needs a touch of work, as there was a moment when they overflowed into the eaves. That said, I think half of Canberra were suffering problems as that was a moment where the rain absolutely blasted down for about half an hour... and I suspect that there were many overloaded water management systems!

More concerning was a little leak in one of the rooms... which I will have to go up to the roof to check the tiles when it isn't raining. I went into the roof space, but it is pretty tight up there and I wasn't able to get to the spot that I needed to... however, I did notice that a good chunk of the sarking was ripped... probably by mice. That probably needs attending to...

Anyway, all of that is a bit of a distraction from the main topic of this post... which is about garden stuff. Well, in this case, it is more about garden infrastructure.

So, as a I mentioned, the day started off with a heavy downpour... and thunderstorms. During the night, it felt like the thunderclaps were right above us... and my oldest daughter was scared that a bolt would hit one of our trees and drop flaming debris onto the house. She came to our bed to sleep... and she conked out immediately after. Of course, after she told me that... I wasn't sleeping!

Anyway, in the morning, I was out doing a tour of the house perimeter to see how the surface water was being drained away. At the moment, we have no ground cover or paving... so, it is pretty damn muddy when it rains. But the downpipes were working well... and most of the water that was being targeted by the new ag-pipe trench was being taken away and channeled through the stormwater. However, there was a low patch that was pooling water... and I dug a little trench to connect it to the ag-pipe line (the water flowed down through the gravel). I have about three more metres of ag-pipe that can extend out further to cover this area... I will be digging out a trench to do that. When I can find some time...

Meanwhile, on the muddier side of the house, I had to dig little trenches to make sure that the water would flow outward and downhill... instead of pooling and then trying to make inroads towards the house. It didn't help that one of the neighbour's gutters had broken and was dumping water into the area as well... I will have to ask them to look at that.

Anyway, after an hour of doing that in the pouring rain... I was cold and drenched. Not a fun way to start the day, but satisfying... but all before my cup of coffee.

... but the fun part came later in the day, when I drove about an hour out (well, longer, as the weather was crap, and I didn't want to go too fast in an unloaded ute)... and picked up these IBCs! These are normally used to transport liquids.... but there has been a culture of halving them and making wicker beds for growing veggies. We probably have enough space in the backyard to comfortably fit about 8 wicker beds... but the ute can only fit two of the IBCs in the tray (so, 4 wicker beds).

Well, we do have much more room... but we don't want to only have wicker beds!

My father-in-law has made 6 wicker beds for their place... and he is going to teach me how to make them from these two. And then we can make more if we find that we want more... and I think I'm pretty keen to be growing as much food as possible! Chickens would also be pretty cool... but I don't have time to make them until about late-September... so, only just in time for planting in spring. Hopefully, not too late...

I guess tomorrow, I will see in the daylight how well the surface drainage has been... I'm hopeful that it did well even under the tremendous downpour... and that bodes well, if it managed in that... then everything else will be a doddle. However, I will have to check the gutters to make sure that they are flowing well.

So... I have already started thinking about what sorts of veggies we want to grow... my wife wants a couple of pear and apple trees down the back. I'm hoping for a raspberry bush, and some tomatos... but in the IBCs... zucchini, beans, carrots... lettuce, Chinese veggies... what else should we have a go at?

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