Paving the Way For Spring

Well the weekend was too short but a beautiful one and the start of Spring. I went for a ride both days. Faffed around in the backyard a bit and didn't get enough of the housework done.

Yesterday I 'paved' the chook house. I just need to get a diamond cutting disc so i can cut a bit out of the corner of four pavers to fit in the corners around the star pickets. Next weekend I hope to be able to pick up some sawdust from the sawmill for the floor. With a bit of luck Ben and I can pick up some when we go to grab some sleepers for Ben's garden beds. I say 'paved' because its pretty uneven. I didn't bother smoothing it out too much, but as Dad said "the chooks wont mind". One step closer to chook house completion.

As I mentioned I went for a ride yesterday. Just a short one though (about 10km) instead of verdoing it like I did last weekend. Ben had a BBQ today and I rode to his place and back again. It was a great day (actually too hot in the sun for a while). Plenty of food and good company. I made some chicken burgers.

• 500gm chicken mince—stick it in a big ol' mixing bowl
• a 'block' of noodles—these are the asian cooking noodles. crush them into small pieces and soak them in hot water until they are done. drain them and toss them in the bowl
  
• a big bunch of coriander—chop it into tiny bits (think the consistency of the parsely for tabouleh, though you don't have to be as fastidious as for tabouleh)
• mix it all up and form it into patties—use plenty of flour as the mix is pretty sticky
• cook them (or even better, sit in a camp chair with a drink and watch Ben cook them)
• Into a nice round white roll, bang a pineapple ring on top and a good slug of sweet chilli sauce (you can put some greenage on the bottom too)

I've been looking for a decent lunar calendar on the internet so I can do my planting the Druid Circle way.

I had a great heap of things I was planning to do in the back yard and got barely any of them done. Compost bins, worm farms, more veggie beds, digging out stumps, finishing the chook nesting box, etc. Oh well, there is always next weekend. Got some great books out of the library though. Organic gardening, solar greenhouses, backyard poultry and a book on composting. The last composting book I got out of the library was a bit too complicated frankly. I really don't need to know what all the bugs and microorganisms that help in composting are called. This book is much better, it just says how to get them happening. A much better approach. I had a worm farm at one stage which I've somehow misplaced in the move to Canberra. I've also mysteriously lost my camping backpack. I think I loaned it to someone at some stage. Actually I have a vague feeling I loaned it to someone so they could lend it to someone else. Whatever actually happened I haven't seen either since I moved to Canberra.

Broadly speaking, the next few weeks I'd like to build a compost set up and get a worm farm happening. I've started popping my food scraps in a bucket ready to compost/worm. Its actually very hard to get in the habit. I keep throwing things in the bin and then remembering I should have put it in the composting bucket. Just goes to show how much we (society I mean not necessarily my erudite readers) are ready to send everything to the land fill. Very humbling. I also want to get some more beds ready for the veggies and get some pink eyes in the ground and start up a few more beds of veggies now that the weather is starting to look a bit more promising. I've also got to get some beds ready for the tomatoes that will be coming in November after Melbourne Cup day (assuming that the cup will be run this year). When the propogation supplies arrive I can get a heap of herb and veggie seedlings in.

Ok thats your lot.