January | 2019 | stay.at.home.life

As part of the never-ending garden makeovers going on around here, I wanted 2 large barrels. I needed something off the ground so that my darling chooks and dogs would not dig them up, and the plants in them would have some chance of becoming established. But then I saw how much barrels were and the idea went wayyyyyy down the list of priorities. I mean who is going to spend $200 to save some $3 petunias?

The blank canvas.

I happened to be at Bunnings just a few days after Christmas, and their pallet recycling pile was massive, presumably from all the extra Christmas stock. I grabbed a long pallet for another project then inspiration struck! I called Mr. SAHL and he was on board. What better reason to pull out all those power tools I buy him.

Unfortunately, heaps of the photos of the progress have gone missing, so what was going to be a step by step guide cannot be. But hopefully, this blog can be inspiration enough anyway. I was aiming for pots at least 70cm tall to deter the chooks. But you can make them any size you like really.

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I was originally planning on painting them, but now I kind of like the rustic finish, even with the random chunks of blue. 🙂

And we have progress. The temporary fence is in place to keep the dogs and chooks out while the groundcover, lychee, and pomegranate trees get established. The middle section is where we will be building an aviary in a few months time. Stay tuned!

A family that bees together, stays together.

Or something like that. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I have been wanting a beehive pretty much forever. Now that we live on a bit more land with a lot more flowers and fruit trees, even more so. But when do you have a spare $400 or so to splash out on a box full of insects? So, alas, it has been sitting on the Wishlist for some time. In a strange turn of events, a swarm of bees made house at Mr SAHL’s work this spring. A kindly man came and removed the swarm and a friendship was established. To cut a long story short, said bees will ‘bee’ coming to live with us in just a few weeks!

But with bees comes responsibeelity! I swear I’ll stop with the bee puns never. In preparation for our new little garden helpers, today we started to build their home expansion (they’ll be coming in a hive).

To save a few dollars, we purchased everything in kit form. It was ridiculously easy to assemble as Miss 9 and Mr 8 demonstrated.

The kids loved assembling the frames and inserting the eyelets with a hammer. The hand-eye coordination and fine motor exercises won’t harm them either ;). Tensioning the wires was left to the adults, but all in all, it was very simple.

They all wanted to help with painting the box, even the doggies, which my OCD struggled with, but hopefully, I can fix that on the final coat.

Overall it was a productive afternoon. It was so nice to not even have to ask the kids to help, they were actually interested and motivated. Let’s hope this motivation keeps up once the actual bees arrive!