Thursday, March 27, 2008

Kangaroo visit



It rained today, and this little guy was looking for some new green shoots to eat in our yard.

What a surprise to see this little beauty, hop past my window as I was talking on the phone!

I love the native wildlife in our area. I saw two crows chasing after a grasshopper in this same spot earlier - and a flock of blue breasted finches decided to perch on the rocks together. The things you notice when you stop to look.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Kookaburra



We found this beautiful little fella looking for lizards as we sat down for our own breakfast. No doubt he was looking for his!

He was just about to take off as we shot this photograph. Another pleasant reminder how close we are living to the native wildlife.

Cut-side retaining wall

We're nearly ready to start erecting the garden shed, but there's a few more walls to go up on the cut-side.

We needed stairs in this one, so what better place to start than on the baby wall first!



I'm standing on the stairs to be. Small wall on the left - whopper wall on the right.




We cut the trench out, ready for the roadbase. This was a very easy wall because it was small.




Cut the tiers in for the different levels.




Extended end of trench slightly, for the ag pipe. It will make more sense in the next picture.




Partially buried ag pipe, beneath the blue-metal, backfill. I'm a few steps ahead of myself though. Let's go back to the first course.




First course goes down on the compacted roadbase. All done by hand. Dave and Sarah were there to help.




Checking it's level, with the spirit level. Gloves are a must have too!




And finally, the finished wall. Well almost finished. The capping stones on top need to have the gaps filled with half-caps. You can also see in this photo, the beginnings of the second mega wall. But more on that in my next entry. It's almost finished too.