More planting has been happening, this time 6 sweet potato plants kindly given to me by my friend Ruth.  First I undertook a bit of research.  You may note in the background there sits a heat pack - this is to ease my aching, decrepit, unfit body as it attains its new role as hobby farmer!

 About a month ago Steve built this 6 foot square vegie bed border, and he dug all the grass out within.  We had visited a racing stables that sells bagged horse poo and brought home 8 bags.  One bag went in the compost bin and the rest went into this vegie bed, mixed with meadow hay.  It has sat there and stewed and it hopefully now yummily ready to receive plants.

 Bit of digging and forking in and the addition of a barrow load of soil, and the sweet potato plants are in.  Now I am not very good at just planting ONE thing, even though common sense tells me that sweet potatoes run riot and will quickly fill this bed.  I just had to pop in some dwarf bean seeds and some zucchini seed along an edge - just to see what happens, you know.  :-)

We are blessed with large amounts of birdlife here, and we get much pleasure watching them.  Today's visitors are the magpies.  Actually they visit most days, there are five of them, and they start at the bottom of the hill and fan out along the ground like the FBI doing a search, and walk up the hill stalking grubs and insects.  Then they fly over to see us at the shed, standing at the door as bold as brass.  I think someone nearby must feed them as they are so tame.  We throw them a small handful of rolled oats and they have a lovely time picking them out of the grass.  I hope rolled oats are a healthy food choice for magpies!

 Another creature that has taken up residence near the shed is this one.  The biggest freakin' hornet I have ever seen in my life!  I am growing some plants near my compost bin and I had covered the ground with cardboard to try and stop the grass from invading.  All I appear to have done is created the perfect living environment for this giant insect, who lives under the cardboard.  But who stands guard, and had ATTITUDE! We watched it drag an enormous huntman spider across the grass a few weeks back and then proceeded to haul the hapless, paralysed arachnid to its underground lair.

And a final footnote (ha ha ha), do you like my new boots?  They are called Bogs and are like posh, mini wellies.  I just had to buy them because they are so pretty.  :-)