Scraping away 4 & 5th February 2017

Back from our lightening trip to the USA, and back to Summer and dust in Inglewood.

And more bindi eyes, picked 80 late on Saturday afternoon, mostly small ones, but a few large ones that I hadn't seen back in January, and then surprisingly another 80 or so on Sunday (pity I don't have Helen's kids to help me)

bucket full of bindis

No mulberries left (or hardly any), and lots of dried ones squashed on the ground - what a waste. Still a lot of plums in the tree by the well - so should do something with them.  And my pomegranates are coming along very nicely.

Also saw that Mark had uncovered an old fish pond?  I'd half uncovered it once before, but then filled it in again given that it was cracked.

fish pond?

Anyway, arrived before lunch and did my tour of the main street to say hello to everyone.

It was relatively hot, so I didn't really feel like gardening outside, and so thought I'd attack the bathroom floor.  When the electricians had done the wiring they'd pulled up part of the lino in the bathroom, and we had then pulled it all up, but there a backing board with some remarkably sticky gunk underneath it.  Swept it into the too hard basket, and just covered it with a couple of blue tarps.  But it's been this way for months now, so I thought time for action!

Got the scraper and started obviously scraping.  Some bits came away in large chunks, others had to be scraped back and forth.  Listened to the podcast of Phoebe's fall while doing so

Tried steaming it off, not sure how effective that was, same with some turps (Justin's suggestion) and also some sugar soap (David R's suggestion) Nothing worked brilliantly.  Just had to keep on scraping.

Unfortunately wasn't wearing gloves,and developed and then burst a large blister on my right palm, so that was it for the day, and went out and searched for bindi eyes, as I wrote earlier.

work in progress #1

And then of course a gin and tonic on the veranda.

G&T

Had a leftover dinner that I'd brought from Melbourne and watched a couple more episodes of Monarch of the Glen  - fell asleep during the 2nd one

Sunday, and had a bit of a sleep in - and then watering

Cleared the dead calendulas from the front garden bed

Lots of dead calendulas

cleared bed

and cut  back my poor fallen artichokes

fallen artichokes

cut back artichokes

And also did a bit more on the bathroom floor, wore gloves this time, and used a different part of my hand to force the scraper down - and just about finished it.  Still a bit of sticky stuff left, but much better than the blue tarps (I think, we'll see what Justin says)

work in progress #2

just about finished

poor raw hand