3 September - Father's Day and Gardening

The morning started off with a special Father's Day breakfast Ali and Sophie had arranged for me. They had put together a lovely Mexican-style meal of burritos, beans, salsa and other goodies. Really delicious and a great start to the day.

Once we were replete we jumped in the car and headed towards Home Depot to start collecting the garden requirements. We began the trip with a visit to States Coffee. This was distinguished by also being a bread bakery, and we left with a superb crunchy olive-filled bread, which didn't survive more than a few minutes. As nice a piece of bread as we've ever had.

Home Depot wasn't easy. It apparently is notable for not having the items you want that day, and indeed some of the things we wanted were not there, but were available online. Ali was also after a BBQ, and of course the one he had his eye on wasn't in stock. We did come away with 8 or so plants and a small selection of necessary garden tools, then collected a few more plants at the local nursery.

The afternoon and early evening were dedicated to the garden. There were quite a few old plants that needed removal, and a pair of climbers that required a massive prune and tidy-up, and all the existing weed matting and irrigation system were in terrible shape. Even getting these first things done made a huge difference to the feel of the space. Next was the realignment of the path - achieved by moving one row of pavers across to the other side of the path. It had been incredibly dry and we had to water to soften the soil enough to dig holes, and there were countless huge roots to remove. The little pick we'd bought had a good sharp blade and could cut through smaller ones, but we also used Sophie's mum's mini electric chainsaw to cut out the larger roots.

Chopping, digging, paving and our helper Juni

By the end of the evening we'd moved the path, planted the 6 biggest trees, smoothed off the lumpy soil, and had ordered some more planters and equipment that we were not able to pick up instore.

Realigned path and new planting

Everyone was thoroughly stuffed but we'd made huge progress. Ali and Sophie were thrilled.