'Twas the Night Before Christmas - A Gardener's Version

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my blogging, gardening, chickening friends out there! I'm still beside myself as to what to do with my weed-filled garden since I can't solarize it 'till summer, so I'm on hiatus until I can think of some way to fix it. Regardless, I still wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and re-post the Gardening Christmas poem I wrote last year! Hope you enjoy!!!


'Twas the Night Before Christmas - A Gardener's Version
by Kate at Gardening Without Skills

'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the yard,
Not a veggie was growing, not even the chard.
The trellis was strung by the green beans with care,
In hopes that an edible plant would grow there.

The chickens were nestled all snug in their nests,
While visions of pasta worms danced in their heads.
Farmer B with his light beer and I with my wine,
Had just settled down for some nice TV time.

When out in the garden I heard a big noise,
I leapt from the couch and tripped over some toys.
Away to the screen door in four seconds flat,
Flipped open the gate latch and tripped on the cat.

When what to my bloodshot eyes did appear,
But a master gardener with a new pair of shears.
He was pushing a wheelbarrow so heavy with plants,
That I started to do my best happy dance.

He was dressed all in green from his hat to his boots,
And his pants were all muddy with dirt from plant shoots.
A bundle of seedlings he had flung on his back,
And he looked for a place to begin the attack.

His trowel how it twinkled - his hoe was so shiny!
His spade was brand new - his gloves were so tiny!
His droll little mouth was drawn up in a smile,
As he worked with his tools in a whimsical style.

He spoke not a word as he started to plant,
And took out some seedlings that he could transplant.
He filled all the raised beds with veggies galore,
As I stood there watching from my screened back door.

And laying his shovel right next to his hoe,
I knew it was time for the gardener to go.
But I heard him exclaim as rolled out of sight,
Happy Gardening to all and to all a good night.

Greetings from Christmas, Florida

You know how when you live somewhere you take the little things in stride and forget that out-of-towners might think something you see every day is actually quite cool?

Enter the town of Christmas, Florida. We're a stone's throw from Christmas and are quite used to seeing the year-round Christmas decorations at the main intersection. Don't make the mistake of getting excited about Christmas. It's not a quaint little town worth going out of your way to visit. It's rural homes, cows, trailer parks, auto salvage businesses, a gas station, a post office and a park with a historic fort. It doesn't have it's own police or mayor or anything and most people would drive through it and hardly notice they aren't in rural East Orlando anymore.



But when it's time to send Christmas cards, living near Christmas is great. Locals know that it's well worth the visit to the Christmas Post office to send your Christmas cards.


They'll be postmarked "Christmas, Florida," and you can borrow one of their ink stamps to stamp a message from Christmas, Florida, on to your cards.

(I forgot to photograph this myself)
Oddly enough, this year the postal workers are requiring you to give them your Driver's License in exchange for the ink stamps that say Christmas, Florida on them. When you're done stamping your cards, they give you your DL back and you can be on your way. Apparently last year all those stamps were stolen when they were just on a table in the lobby. Says a lot about people when they'll steal an ink stamp meant to adorn Christmas cards.


But we did it today - the boys chose a green candy cane Season's Greetings stamp and we put one on the back of each of our Christmas cards before sending them off. I believe this is an essential part of the Christmas Post Office experience in case someone rips open your card without noticing the oh-so-awesome postmark on the front.


So there you have it - a peek into Christmas, Florida, where it's Christmas year round!

Wildlife Weekend: Thanksgiving Roadkill and a Rescue

We aren't into Black Friday shopping at all, but I did send Farmer B out on Thanksgiving morning to a local Walgreens to pick up a Christmas present for the boys that was on sale for 50% off. It was an odd place to find the present, but at that price it warranted a quick run to the store.

On the way home Farmer B called me quite excited that he was pulled over on the side of the road watching our national bird eating his very own Thanksgiving dinner. The eagle was about 3 feet away from his car window and was ripping apart some sort of roadkill. Farmer B took quite a few photos of it and even a short video and it was the hit our our Thanksgiving once he got home and shared it with the boys.


Bald eagles aren't unusual around here, but seeing one so close for so long isn't a daily occurance. I thought it was fitting that the turkey almost beat out the bald eagle as America's national bird and here was our up-close sighting on turkey day! Just think - if the turkey had been chosen as America's national bird, maybe we'd all be eating bald eagle and gravy for Thanksgiving dinner!

We've been on a bit of a wildlife kick recently. Right before Thanksgiving, Farmer B was soaking his legs in the swimming pool when he called for me to come over and see what the dogs were obsessing about. I walked over to the side of the pool and noticed an uninvited visitor stuck between the pool, the screen enclosure and the dogs. I'm not sure what it is about snakes, but we get an insane amount of them in and around our pool - luckily all the ones who have come in our pool area have been non-venomous.


This one was a little garter snake who happened to slither in to the right pool enclosure since I have a firm policy of never killing a non-venomous snake. I put the dogs outside and got a bucket and the boys plastic golf club to begin my rescue attempt.



After a few unsuccessful attempts and some awesome dancing on my part, I flicked the snake into the bucket and brought him inside to show to the boys. The snake was less than grateful for his rescue and spent the entire time striking at the air in the general direction of my hand.


I took him outside and released him under a bush by the front door. I think the whole experience was traumatic enough for him that he won't be back.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

If you've read my blog a time or two you might recall that I have two sons. One's an outgoing sports-loving chatterbox and the other one is a quieter kid who enjoys imaginative play and doing the opposite of his big brother. I love that they're so different because I get the best of both worlds and being an only child myself I get to experience the weirdness of siblings.

Here's what my little one wore to play outside today. This is what he has been wearing pretty much solid for a few weeks now. He prefers to be called Luke (as in Luke Skywalker) and oftentimes he won't even respond to his given name.


This is the same kid that only let us call him Nigel for about a year when he changed into his alter-ego, Nigel Marvin, the British naturalist.

Whenever I point out the eccentricites of this child to my family, they come back with the apple/tree analogy.

I wonder what are they trying to say?

The $10 dog

Remember this post?

And those adorable pictures of that sweet little puppy devouring my money?

Ah yes...way back in March of this year when I caught Saffron eating a $5 bill. Back when I was naïve enough to think that I could take that $5 to the bank and they'd give me a new one, but later discovered none of our local banks will trade out damaged currency.

It's true what they say about puppyhood. Sometimes you can barely remember the fat, fluffy little blob you could hold in your arms and sometimes their antics make it feel like it all happened yesterday.

…sniff...

Oh wait - it did happen yesterday.


Early yesterday morning I saw Saffie hiding under the sofa table looking especially guilty. That IS her normal look so I don't always give it a second thought. But yesterday I saw something hanging out of her mouth and again I had the "phew - it's just a kleenex/paper towel/piece of paper" thought before noticing the familiar color and shape of it.


DAMMIT - She ate ANOTHER $5 bill.


She is now officially worth $10. Although on mornings like that, it's highly debatable.

Halloween Horrors

It's no secret I'm in a "bit" of a gardening and blogging lull. I know it's not forever, but it's the longest gardening and blogging dry spell I've had since I started this gig a couple of years ago. I'm allowing myself to do it guilt-free with the promise of coming back to both full-time when the time is right. That being said, the time was just perfect for this post.

We love to go overboard decorating for Halloween. We have tons of great Halloween decorations to entice trick-or-treaters and their parents, from a graveyard, to full-size skeletons, a fog machine, strobe lights, orange lights, talking decorations and masses of big stretchy spiderwebs.

It's these spiderwebs that caused the problem that led to this blog post. Poor little Saffron was having a hard time adjusting to all the weird decorations and was exceedingly spooked by the new scenery in the front yard. She was in one of her mad tail-tucked running fast "episodes" when she darted through one of the big spiderwebs and got stuck - fast.


She flopped around a bit looking pathetic while we all doubled over with laughter. I then wandered inside to get the camera and came back outside to find...


...that she hadn't moved an inch.


I'm just a puppy. Help me. Please?


Her back legs were wound up like you'd string up a steer.


The more she wiggled the worse it got.


She flopped around and we laughed hysterically. It was great.

The best part was that after we freed her - and it took two of us, by the way - she jumped up and went straight back to flying around the yard at full speed and shot straight back into the exact same spiderwebs and got stuck again.

Puppies. Not the brightest bulbs in the ole' Christmas tree, are they?

Kid Craft :: Make Your Own Bored Game

I haven't posted a Kid Craft in ages and thought it was about time since my garden is on a hiatus right now. I prefer to tell people that my garden is on sabbatical to make it sound more impressive, but I know no one's buying it. I'll admit that I don't post kid crafts that often because I don't think my average reader comes here for that - I think most people come to this blog for my dyn-o-mite gardening skills - snicker, snicker, snicker.

I thought I'd put my gardening prowess to one side today and show off a kid craft that actually turned out great. The boys and I made this game at the end of the summer, when the long, hot days were dragging and I needed something creative to occupy them one morning. I'll start by saying that one of the fun things about having more than one child is that the chances of them liking the same thing at the same time are about nil. So one will like Star Wars while the other likes Indiana Jones. This led me to the game that killed the end of summer boredom blues for our family. It was a full-out life saver.

It was simple. I sat down with the boys with some pieces of paper and let them draw out some ideas for the game. Of course the ideas were awesome things like "Battle Darth Vader" and "Swing on a rope with Indiana Jones" and "Fight a monster with Scooby Doo" - all things that seemed impossible to integrate into one board game.

But then I had a eureka moment. Yes, we'd integrate all the ideas the boys had into the biggest mish-mosh of junk you've ever seen and everyone would be happy. This is something you would never be able to find in a store. It would be awesome.

I got a piece of poster board and a sharpie and drew out a long snaking trail for the game. I separated the trail into typical game board squares and gave the boys a box of crayons and let them color in the squares. We also made bridges (or the requested "shortcuts") that would allow a player to battle the bad guy of their choice, so they colored those in too. This whole process was quite time consuming for them, which I thoroughly enjoyed. That's not wrong, is it?


Then we went online to Google image search and printed out a handful of pictures of their favorite characters that we cut out and glued down on the game board in the appropriate places. We've got scenes from The Last Airbender, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Scooby Doo etc.

We used an oversized die from another board game and players can choose their own "guys" each time they play. We've used full-sized GI Joes and Star Wars figures, lego guys, army men, batmen and even a dirty sock once. Whatever tickles their fancy for the moment is their guy, which really does add to the fun of it.


My boys like twists in games so we made up a stack of game cards by making a bunch of simple text boxes in MS Word and writing appropriate game card lingo on each one. They all correspond to the characters on the board and some are just downright silly - "Sing your favorite song or go back 2 spaces" for example (I should note that my youngest son pulls that card, growls, and then moves back 2 spaces every time). I sat there on the computer and let both boys come up with ideas for an equal number of cards. We have some that move you forward (Yoda helped you. Forward 3 spaces you go); some that hurt you (You tripped on Indiana Jones' whip. Go back one space); and some that challenge you (A T-Rex is chasing you. Roll higher than a 3 to escape or go back 5 spaces). We made 20 cards and printed them out on card stock and cut them out. We also drew two rectangles on the board for 'cards" and "used cards" so they had a home while we were playing.


We then put numbers on all the bridges. When you reach a gateway to the bridge (a square marked with an X), you must roll the die and if you get the number on the bridge or higher, you can cross it. If not, you stay where you are (although one of the bridges where you battle the Emperor from Star Wars says right on the board that if you don’t roll the right number, you lose a turn).


We put star stickers throughout the game on random squares. If you land on a star sticker you draw a card and do what the card says.


If you land on a square with another player you have to battle the other player. Can you tell I have boys? This was their idea and their favorite part of the game. When another player lands on a spot that's already occupied, both players roll the die. The person who rolls the lower number moves backward that number of spaces. So if one person rolls a 4 and one person rolls a 2, the person with the 4 stays put and the person with the 2 goes back 2 spaces. And if you're really lucky you'll land on a bridge and get to roll to cross the bridge or land on a star sticker and draw a card. It's all very exciting.


I'm very surprised that we made this game in August to get us through a long summer day and here we are in October and the boys still enjoy playing this game almost daily. Since it's won the test of time at our house I thought I'd post it here incase another parent needs a basically free craft to entertain the kids. I am really amazed that they're still as excited to play this as they were the day we made it. You can customize it to whatever your children are interested in and you can put many different characters on the board to please multiple kids.

It's the best board game for killing the boredom around our house now… I'll admit that making a Halloween one with black and orange squares and Halloween characters sounds appealing and making a Christmas one with red, green and white squares and completing Christmas challenges also will be on the to-do list for the holidays. Who knew that a 59 cent piece of poster board could be so much fun?

Days Like These

Days like these make me happy to live in Florida. I complain about the oppressive heat and humidity of the summer. I get upset when September rolls around and it's as bad as August, which was even hotter than July. Then October sneaks in and the weather becomes the thing tourists dream of. The highs are in the low 80s and the lows have finally dropped into the upper 60s.

And we have sunsets like this.


I'll remind myself of this awesome weather when November rolls in and we're back to having oppressive heat and I'm drooling over pictures of bundled up northerners dashing about in the cold.

Happy Birthday Saffron!

Smile, it's your birthday!


Doesn't it seem like I JUST got that little bundle of trouble...er...joy for Christmas? I mean didn't she JUST look like this five minutes ago?


I can't believe I've had her for 10 months now and she's turning one year old today. Amazing. She started out at 21 lbs and she's 62 lbs of fat puppy now.

She's considerably less annoying now than she was back then too. She goes up to an hour without trying to eat something in the house now, which is a huge improvement. She's turning into a real live bonefide loveable dog right before our very eyes. We'll be celebrating her birthday in style today so point yourself toward Florida and give a birthday shout out to my girl on her big day!



Happy Birthday Saffron!

Always the chicken race bridesmaid…

Today was a sad day for me - for the second year in a row. What are the chances that all the cards would fall into place in just the perfect way AGAIN so that I would miss out on what is obviously one of the most important and exciting days in my small town?? Clearly the answer to that question is 100%.

Today was the Charity Chicken Race in my neck o' the woods. And it fell on the exact day and time as my oldest son's soccer game…just like it did last year - my first year owning chickens and being aware of the race. I mean I'm a chicken lover and I live in a town that is so dedicated to chickens that they hold a chicken race and I CAN'T GO! But as any mom will tell you, kids come first, so there I was on the sidelines cheering my 6-year-old's soccer team while hoards of locals darted around a racetrack holding decorated chickens experiencing full-on chicken nirvana.


And to top it all off, my son's team lost their game today, although my son did score one of the two goals for his team. But his best friend was on the winning team, so he wasn't sad that he lost since his friend was happy, and the kids are still young enough that they're just happy to be out there playing. How could I miss that?


Clearly I could not.

But I'll admit as I was sitting there, I was thinking how badly I wanted to decorate a chicken. And race a chicken. And buy chicken memorabilia. And listen to the chicken calling competition. And chuck a chicken. And fully immerse myself in local chicken culture.


Maybe next year the planets will align correctly and the game and the race will be on different days - or different times at least.

Until then I'll just chase my girls around the yard for kicks and fantasize about what would have been...

The Great White Beast Strikes Again

Last night was one of those nights - you know the nights where you just shake your head and wonder if other people experience such weirdness in their own lives…

I had just put the boys in the bath and let the dogs out for a run in the backyard. Our obedient Shepherd barked to let me know it was time to let them back inside and I obliged. However, Saffie was not with him. This isn't highly unusual since she is prone to loping around the yard in search of mischief, but I hadn't fed them yet and since food is her priority, it was weird not to be bowled over as she dashed past me into the kitchen.

Hmmm….

I decided to do a quick jog around the yard while calling her name and whistling madly, which always gets her attention.

Nothing.

I started to get a bit concerned that somehow she'd wiggled her tubby body under the fence and escaped from the back yard. Our fence line is very secure, but that seemed like the only viable option since she's not the type of dog who could ever scale a 6-foot privacy fence.

Finally I walked around to the corner of the yard and called her and she appeared out of nowhere looking very guilty with something orange on her nose and her mouth. My first thought "GAH! She's eaten an orange kitty!" As she ran over I saw that this orange stuff stuck on her nose wasn't fur, but was feathers.

Oh dear.

She bolted from me back to the corner of the yard and I saw a mess of orange feathers there on the grass.


Next to the feathers I saw an orange lump wedged flat against the grass pinned toward the bottom of the fence. Oh man. It was a chicken, and not one of my girls, but obviously one of my Korean neighbor's chickens. And it was missing a lot of tail and back feathers. I could see from her underdeveloped comb and wattles that she was a young pullet - not of egg-laying age yet.


Saffie continued to nip at the poor thing so I grabbed her by her scruff and ran back into the house with her and tossed her into her crate. Then I grabbed the camera and headed back outside to rescue the terrified chicken.

The poor thing was panting and shivering and had a bloody bald spot on her back where her feathers were torn out. I was torn between being glad that Saffie's first instinct wasn't immediately killing and eating the chicken - and being slightly disappointed that she chose hurt it at all.


I picked her up and petted her and then realized I had no idea what to do with this thing. I ran around in circles a few times hoping to get inspired, but nothing jumped out at me. I set her down on the grass to see if she could walk, and she could stand, but was too shocked to move at all. Then I thought I should toss her over the fence back into the neighbor's yard, but she was in shock and I imagined her falling 6 feet to the ground and thudding into an injured, bloody lump on the grass and that didn't seem like the best idea.


So I ran onto our screened-in patio and put her there while I got the boys into their pajamas and tried to figure out what to do with the chicken. I told them what happened and that we'd have to wrap the chicken in a towel and drive her to the neighbor's house (since trotting around in the dark with a wrapped-up chicken and two little boys in PJs didn't appeal to me).

We went on the patio to get her and she was gone. Of course she was. A totally screened in patio and no chicken. The three of us searched for a good 10 minutes and found her inside a roll of art paper in the boys' easel.

We wrapped her in a towel and got in the car - me with the chicken on my lap - both boys giddy about the whole experience.

(Awesome photo taken by two small boys fighting over one cell phone camera - and yes, I'm appropriately wearing a chicken tshirt).

I pulled into the neighbor's driveway and told them the story. They were very thankful to have her back, but didn't seem as concerned as I would have been, which is fine because my chickens are family pets and their chickens are simply egg producers. I don't think they name their chickens, but I can tell they still like and respect them. The neighbor didn't seem very concerned over the missing feathers and bloody back either since she said that the chickens peck each other from time to time too, but again, different chicken-owner relationship at their house. She thanked me profusely and we left.

Saga over.

Damn puppy.

Focus on the Other Two Beauties

I've noticed that my blonde beauty, Clementine, gets all the chicken-related attention around here. When people visit us, Clementine is the one that gets awkwardly held and fussed over. Clementine is the one who gets the most photo op's. And even on the blog, Clementine is the focus most often that not. It's easy to see why - she's a big blonde beauty who likes to be around people and actually enjoys the attention. Maggie and Clementine are the two more "chickeny" chickens who are harder to catch when I need to round them up and definitely don't fight over who gets to sit on my lap first.

I thought it was only fair to focus on the other two this time around because they are beautiful silly chickens who deserve center spotlight for once.

Sookie, my generic Easter Egger, looked like a chipmunk when she was a chick. She's the smallest hen, but oddly enough she reigns supreme at the top of the pecking order. She's faster than the other two and impossible to catch if she doesn't want to be caught. Luckily for me, all three of our chickens trust me enough to let me round them up when I need to. I chose her because I was told there was a huge chance she'd lay greenish-blue eggs and I was beyond excited about that. You've seen our eggs - all brown, so that hope came and went pretty quickly.


She has a beautiful set of feathers on her with a lion's mane sort of vibe around her neck. She has a small comb and wattle - I believe it's called a peacomb and her legs are a greenish-grey.


Poor Sookie desperately needed to lay and egg while I was taking photos and humored me just long enough and then bolted for the nest. Of course her two curious sisters stand there staring at her in her most delicate of moments. Can't a chicken have an ounce of privacy these days?

Maggie, my Barred Plymouth Rock, is the most inquisitive of all the chickens. If there is something unusual going on, she's the first one to investigate. She's definitely second-in-command to Sookie and spends a lot of time following her around.

She thinks anything I have in my hand might be a treat, so even a blade of grass in my fingers is enough to send her hurtling across the yard for a quick peck. She really is a curious little thing with gorgeous coloring and a bright red floppy comb. I know none of my chickens are show quality, but I'm not in this for the ribbons or the breeding, so it's irrelevant.


As soon as Clementine realized that she wasn't going to be the focus of my photo shoot she shot back into the chicken coop to sulk.


She can be so dramatic sometimes.

A discrepancy in the paint department

You've heard of Christmas in July. How about Easter in September? There has been a mix-up in the Internal Paint Department of our chickens lately and we've had some interesting surprises in the nest boxes. This diagram of the inside of a chicken explains what's been happening to cause these issues. You can see the Hen Paint Department a bit above the man's hands in the photo. Clearly, we have a disturbance within ours.


Take the striped egg from a week ago. It looks like this one got stuck in the paint department a bit too long. The stripe forms an almost perfect line across the top of the egg with a much darker botom to the egg.


Then today we found a white egg in the nest. Clearly this one bypassed the paint department altogether. You can see it in the picture below next to a regular brown egg and one of our recent speckled eggs, which was obviously caused by some bad airbrushing.


I've had a word with all the hens but none will fess up as to who's the culprit. They're a very tight knit trio and their beaks are sealed during my interrogations. Although, Clementine did admit to laying a bizarre oblong egg a few weeks ago, she's mum on the rest.

Deep down at the bottom we found a garden

As I promised, this weekend was THE weekend. The one where Farmer B and I tried to turn the thicket of shoulder-high weeds back into a garden. I have been dreading it since the beginning of the summer. I anticipated it being a horrible experience with oppressive heat and bugs... and holy heat wave - was I ever right.



Farmer B started by pulling up the anti-puppy fence that we keep around the garden and immediately both dogs dove in to the long grass. We ended up accidentally breaking the underground electric dog fence while pulling up the garden fence, which was an added bonus. Include an added trip to Home Depot to buy wire repairing equipment to this wonderful task.


Did I mention this weekend is Farmer B's birthday too? Yeah, he's a dedicated husband when it comes down to it.

Then Farmer B used the push trimmer to hack through the weeds in an attempt to find the raised beds. Surprisingly they were still under there - burried, but intact.


Did I mention how hot it was? Luckily the heat index was just UNDER 100 degrees so we didn't pass out, but contemplated it several times.

After he whacked down all the grass and weeds around the raised beds it was my fun-filled job to pull up the masses of weeds that had found a new home in the raised beds. As I was doing this with sweat running down my arms and spiders the size of cats running up my arms I really wondered if it was all going to be worthwhile at the end of the day.


When I got one bed about halfway cleared I decided to grab Clementine from the chicken run and toss her into the bed to save me from the creepy-crawlies who were hell-bent on latching on to my face as I pulled up 3-foot long weeds. My dainty (useless) yellow chicken spent 2 seconds in the blistering direct sun in the garden, made an angry bokking noise, then made a bee-line for the shady woody area all the way on the other side of the yard before I could even grab the camera. Pathetic chicken.

Then I decided to bring out Maggie and put her to work. I tossed her into the raised bed and went back to weeding. It worked out GREAT! She grabbed two large spiders and some wormy-leggy thing before becoming overwhelmed from the heat and making a bee-line to the same shady patch of trees where Clementine was relaxing.




Pathetic. Both of them.


At the end of the day I had a sore back, a visible garden area and one de-weeded raised bed. I was beyond exhausted, but felt good that it was done… but felt angry that I still had the other bed to clear.


On Day 2 I returned to the garden (sans useless sun-shy chickens) and pulled the weeds out of the second bed. I was happy to see that the spiders were just as comfortable in this bed as they were in the other one. I was a bit afraid that some big-fanged 8-legged creature might not ruin my day by jumping at my arm. Luckily my fear was unwarranted.

I did find something very interesting buried in this bed though…


Carrots! Who knew? I didn't attempt to bring them inside since I'm sure they were woody and rubbery and weird, but it was a funny thing to see growing amongst the weeds.

At the end of day two, it was done. A weedless garden. Two weedless raised beds. Finally.


I figured that when I was done I'd have one of those "See what you get for not weeding all summer?" moments. I was wrong. Instead I had a "Gah - this was HORRIBLE - THIS is why I didn't go out into the garden all summer" moments.

I'm now faced with a couple of problems.

1) I'm convinced that these beds are now full of weed seeds just ready to sprout at their first opportunity. I'm not sure quite what to do about that. I do not have the resources to empty out the beds and buy all new compost, peat moss and vermiculite. So I'll have to think on this one since I did want to try a Fall planting…

2) I now have about 3 inches less of mix in the boxes as I did when I started. Regardless of what I decide, the boxes will have to be topped up in a big way before I ever plant again.

So there you have it. As my dad would say "Good job done." As I would say after doing this "@$%^ job done!"