Mulching up.
Our backyard, has, quite literally, gone to the dogs. It is their domain, their realm. The kid’s play equipment is out the front.
Today we did some work out there – we want to be able to send the kids out there without worrying. The problem is that our block slopes quite steeply, so there are some old retaining walls, which the dogs climb up to be able to look in the kitchen window. At worst it’s about a 1200mm drop to a concrete path, at best it’s a 300mm fall onto dirt. We need to block off the retaining walls so that neither the dogs nor the kids can get up there and replant the lawn. Also, we should revegetate the top deck – there are a few trees and shrubs up there, but the more the better for holding the soil. It’s essentially bound by the back fence at one end, the neighbours on one side, the path beside the house on the other and the fence to the front yard.
I was moving some mulch (using a blue IKEA bag) to what I’ll call the top deck, where the dogs walk along to look in the kitchen window and out the front yard. They have well worn tracks that they follow, which I was obliterating with the piles of mulch. They’d also been using the big pile of mulch to get up to the top deck. So they were looking at me as if to say “What on earth are you doing? This is our place, go back inside!”
While I was doing all this, A was cleaning out the gutters and pruning some tree branches that scraped on the roof. Love that man! Willow was ‘helping’ by holding the bag open for me, playing with the dogs and generally poking at things with sticks. Dexie woke up from his nap and came out to poke sticks at his sister.
