Taro

I spent a few hours today at my garden plot at the community garden as it was our monthly Working Bee. I enjoyed our meeting and look forward to pitching in some hours towards grant submissions to better our area and resources. This will also allow me to build on my fundraising skills for future job prospects.

As for my little plot, the sun was harsh and the rocket I planted 2 days ago is yellowing and withering. I have planted other produce in the last 4 weeks which is surviving. Eggplant, mint chocolate, parsley, tomato, crystal apple cucumber, Lebanese cucumber and ginger. Still no sign of radish or sunflowers poking through the ground.

Another plot owner cleaned up over the weekend and discarded 6 taro plants. I saved them from the compost heap and claimed them as my own. I aim to replant 3 and to cook and eat the others. This will be new to me as I have never purchased or cooked TARO in it's raw form before.

I've placed my foot next to the taro in the photograph for you to have an idea of the very large size. Do you have any suggestions for no fuss food preparation of these for my family? I love trying new foods however I am impatient with complicated recipes. Also after reading various information on the taro I feel nervous about toxicity if not prepared well.

Looking forward to your suggestions :-)

Stephanie at Frugal Down Under.

Soil

I read a very good article on garden soil in a discarded gardening magazine recently. It stated that much of the bagged soil that is sold in Australian gardening shops is actually a detriment to our environment. The reason is most of it is dug from waterways thus damaging our fragile ecosystems. I never knew this and was blown by my new knowledge.

It went on to say people that moan about their terrible natural soil in their yards are actually missing the rich Gold they have. Most of the soils just needs to be enriched with compost and mulch. So instead of digging away your dirt and removing it for glossy shop bought stuff, mix in other enriching ingredients and give it life.

A great tip was if you don't have enough to build raise beds then look around your neighbourhood. Is someone having their yard dug up for a pool or the likes? If yes, ask them if you can have some of the earth which will be otherwise dumped and left unused. They save the cost of disposing of it and you save the cost of buying it. Winners all round and Eco Frugal to boot.

Now my happy friends, get out there and get your hands dirty ;-)

Have a wonderful Long Weekend for those lucky to have one,
Stephanie at Frugal Down Under.

Oh Peanut

Over the weekend I began to prepare my garden plot for the dry season planting as this is the optimal fortnight to place our seeds and seedlings in the ground.

I harvested 2 of my peanut plants that I had planted from peanuts about 6 months ago. I thought I had very little however I watched a few You Tube clips and discovered a good plant has about 40 peanuts. I was successful after all as I have more then 40 peanuts per plant.

For children and others without peanut allergies this is a fun snack to grow. Easy to maintain, exciting to see the plant being pulled out of the ground and a short growing period.

This Easter long weekend I will be planting tomatoes, cucumbers, winged beans and other edibles that take my fancy. What about you? Tell me where you live, what season you are in and what are you growing and harvesting. Looking forward to hearing about your attempts and successes.

Have a Happy Day,
Stephanie at Frugal Down Under.

Gardening to Keep Your Produce Costs Down

I spent some time in my garden plot over the weekend to check on 2 chokos I planted earlier in the week. Unfortunately they did not look too good. But there might be a little hope. I'm crossing my fingers as I love chokos with a dab of butter and sprinkle of salt. No one else has chokos in our community garden so I'm learning from books on how to grow them.

Here is my glorious harvest from the weekend which will be incorporated in this weeks meals to help keep within the weekly meals budget. I love organic, grown by me produce. It makes me proud to know I can achieve fresh produce from my own sweat and labour.

Pumpkin, 2 Varieties of Eggplants and Winged Beans.

Two years ago I would have never imagined that I could grow food for my own meals. But it's possible. And if it's possible for me - (a lazy, procrastinator - that likes things done quickly because I'm always getting bored and ready for the next thing) - then it's possible for anyone. If you haven't tried your hand at a bit of gardening, I say "Give it a go". Start with a few herbs in small pot plants to get your meals tastier, healthier and greener. And go from there. Get bolder, bigger and greener.

As always I am interested in your comments. Do you grown anything yourself? What do you have growing? What are your harvesting? Or even, what is preventing you from planting a few items to add to your meals?

Cooking From The Garden

If you can cook some or all of your meals from your garden then you are saving some pretty pennies. You don't need to eat fancy meals out of decadent recipe books each day. Gathering from your garden, looking at what you have at home and making do is extremely satisfying and enriching.

However recipe books may inspire you with new ideas on how to use your produce. This book from the UK I borrowed from the library has inspired me as it has ingredients that I can source locally and from my garden.

Do you follow recipe books or do you become an inventor/creator in your kitchen?

Local Produce

I went to the Rapid Creek Markets, to see what people are harvesting at this time of year to gain ideas for my garden plot and also to purchase good local produce with low eco miles.

This is my purchased fruits which is coming out of my usual weekly $100 grocery budget.

Total Cost: $9.50

Limes: $2.00
Chinese Plums: $2.50
Mandarins: $2.00
Dragon Fruit: $3.00

Sorry for the poor pic - I used The Rambling Expats camera which I am not used to.

Have you been buying any local anything lately?

Frugalicious Lunch

The party is over, the gluttony of the festive season has ended, The Rambling Expat had his birthday and now there are no more excuses until Dolly's birthday at the end of February and that will need to come from the weekly groceries budget.

Penny pinching does not mean unhealthy bland foods for us if we keep gardening. I want to show you the delicious lunch we had which cost us 1 cup of Rice, 1 table spoon of Olive Oil and 3 cloves of Garlic, the rest came from the garden.

The photograph is not magazine beautiful but the meal was an explosive taste of delicious flavours and extremely moorish. When I finished weeding, pruning and planting, I filled my basket with with just enough produce to make lunch for 3.

I stir fried in a little olive oil:

• garlic (shop bought)
• lemongrass (my plot)
• ginger (communal plot)
• chili (communal plot)
• chocolate mint (my plot)
• snake beans (my plot)
• brazilian spinach (my plot)
• basil (my plot)
• eggplant (my plot)
• malabar spinach (communal plot as mine has died)
• sweet potato leaves (friends plot)

Served on a bed of rice. (My rice bag was shop bought).

For dessert we had pawpaw with lime. The pawpaw was from the communal plot and the lime I found on top of our green waste pile. I don't know who threw it there or where it came from as I don't think there is a lime tree in the botanical gardens. But it was in perfect condition so I took it. And happy I was to do so, as I love lime squeezed on rice, fruit, veggies and in a glass of water.

Lunch for 3 cost about 50 cents and was delicious. Cutting back on food costs means we can still have a great lifestyle, be healthy and save for the important things in life such as Dolly's future education, retirement, cutting back on work hours and a house.

Are you doing some penny pinching too?

Pay Cut = More Gardening

I'm on recreational leave from work (3 weeks to go), then I return for 2 weeks at my regular hours and then... finishing each day at 2:00pm. This will cut back my pay by $233 a week. That is a lot of money!

So I am tightening my belt and keeping my purse closed so that we can keep paying off our mortgage, keep saving for travel and save for the future too. This also means I need to garden more so I can cut back on my grocery shopping, declutter to put things on Ebay and have more organisation at home.

Everyday this week Dolly and I have attended to our plot for 1 hour, pruning, weeding and preparing our beds for more plants. We started growing food less then a year ago and learning as we go. It's been a great deal of fun and I'm becoming more confident with each day.

This is what we have growing at present:

Jerusalem Artichoke - tubers growing under the ground.

Rosella for the flowers - but also the leaves which are tangy (Dolly LOVES the leaves)

2 types of eggplants - this is my favourite.

Lemongrass - makes nice cold herbal drinks and used for fragrant cooking flavours.

A small ginger root I planted 6 months ago popping up :-)

1 very sad capsicum - I've had no luck so far.

Red Pawpaw - I planted these 8 months ago. one each of female and male - Male now fruiting.

Peanuts - These will be ready for harvesting in 4 months - can't wait!

Basil and new long lebanese eggplants.

Brazilian Spinach - A happy grower all year round.

Prolific Snake Beans - I don't like them as much as the other ones I had. Will plant seeds of others this week.

This is not the best season for growing as everything suffers in the tropical monsoonal heat. However people in Bali (same weather) certainly don't stop growing and eating at this time of year, so I am interested in knowing what my ex-couchsurfing hosts are growing so I can try and replicate their successes.

What are you growing or cutting back on this year?

Supermarket Shelves & Food Security.

As most of you know we had a cyclone heading our way over Christmas. It didn't hit our city/town however it did go inland to the Kakadu region.

The cyclone/storm caused flooding and damage to roads and rail tracks, preventing road trains (very large trucks) and freight trains from driving into our city. We live far from the other side of Australia where everything tends to come from. Even our local food goes to the other side for sorting before coming back to our supermarket shelves - CRAZY!

People shopped a lot for Christmas meals. Then people shopped a lot for cyclone preparation. And then with the roads being blocked nothing was coming through. Coles Supermarket fruit and veg section had limited produce on offer when I went in at 7:45am. By 5pm I heard the was not a tomato or single lettuce leaf in sight. I heard there was hardly anything available in the fresh produce aisles.

Pears and Other Softer Fruits Such As Stone Fruit All Gone Except For A Few Tough Grapes.

These Last 4 Bags of Sad Rocket Were Quickly Snapped Up.

Shelves Becoming Bare.

Lots of Long Lasting Apples in the Background, All These Soft and Bruised Tomatos Were Gone By Afternoon.

I travelled extensively in Russia in 1978 and spent a few days in Moscow in 1984. I have seen the queues to purchase an ice cream cone as I stood a good hour in line too. I have seen long quiet queues in the freezing cold to purchase minimal items. A loaf of bread here and a warm hat there. Eye opening for a kid from a country with abundance and waste.

The shelves at Coles made me think a lot about food security, the future and the need to grow more of our own produce. Everyone can grow a little of their own food, even if it's just one small plant to start off with. A year ago I knew absolutely nothing about gardening or plants. Now as I have my small garden plot I am learning from books, blogs, other gardeners and best of all from my own experiences of trial and error. I am growing some of my own food and if the supermarket shelves have nothing to offer I can pick nutrient rich foods from my plot.

Are you growing in your garden, pot plant, styfoam box? If yes, what are your food for table successes?

Cyclone Making A Come Back, Op Shopping and Gardening.

It seems the cyclone will be heading our way as it has changed directions yet again. We may have gale force winds Christmas evening. However Darwin may miss out on being directly hit. It's a wait and see game with preparations thrown in. So far it's only predicted to be a category 2, but big enough to cause damage where I live.

This morning Dolly and I left the Rambling Expat at home for 2 and a half hours and headed to our local Salvation Army Op Shop (charity/thrift shop) (which I find over priced) and looked for the half price items (I was searching for heart shaped buttons). I was out of luck however we did make a few purchases.

• Dolly purchased a Tinker Bell costume - $2.50
• Baby socks & hat for her Dolls - $1 the lot.
• I purchased a skirt for $2.50 because the light cotton, bird print fabric was too pretty to leave behind.

Total Cost = $6 (hat missing from pic)

Fabric is a light cotton with pretty birds.

Dolly and I then went to our garden plot to catch up on gardening as I haven't done any in over 5 weeks. The garden plot helps to reduce our groceries costs, is a healthier option to sitting at home watching TV and has way less food miles then items from the supermarket. We weeded, pruned and fed the chickens spinach. As I went to place green waste in the compost bin I carelessly thought wow look at that pretty snake.

WHAT!!! Stopped myself in time as I realised SNAKE! Stepped back and withdrew my hand. I think this is a small Golden Tree Snake - not dangerous. But I still don't want to be bitten.

Golden Tree Snake?

She was keeping an eye on me for the rest of the time at the plot.

This is our lovely produce: If purchased in a supermarket this would easily be over $25 worth. I am so lucky to have a garden plot.

Healthy, Local and Organic.

• Basil from my plot and a friends plot (for pesto).
• A handful of a new type of snake bean I have been growing (to eat with lunch tomorrow).
• A few chilli's from another plot as their tree was loaded (to add to various dishes in next few days).
• Eggplants (I want to make chargrilled marinated eggplant if possible).
• Pawpaw (for snacking).
• Banana from our home garden (for snacking). These trees will blow down in gale force winds.

We ended the day with Dinner at Grandmas and then Dolly, Grandma, The Rambling Expat and myself driving around in our little car to see all the Christmas lights. Dolly had begged to do this and was thrilled by each house she saw twinkling. She asked if we could do the same. I said no and explained the financial cost and ecological waste involved.

How was your day? Did you have any time for the garden or other inexpensive pursuits?

Snake Bean Community Garden Fundraiser

On Sunday I lifted my head a bit before 6:00am, chopped down 6 banana leaves, cut them and washed them in preparation for a Snake Bean Community Garden fundraiser where we would offer them as plates, instead of paper plates. The beauty with these is once someone has finished their cake they can just toss their "plate" in the garden.

Preparing Banana Leaves for Serving Cake

Quick Cut and Rinse

Then off to the Botanical Gardens to drop off tables and chairs and home again to get my family to the event. The Friends of the Botanical Gardens were having their huge yearly plant sale. So our garden group piggybacked their amazing day with a cake and tea stall right in the path of all their customers. Our group is made up of many talented and variously skilled people; some made cake, some made preserves, some potted plants and some harvested produce from the gardens. I'm not good at that stuff so I had found another way to contribute.

Some of Our Group Members Packing (and tasting) at the End of the Day.

The previous week I called Bunnings and spoke with the Community Activities Officer asking advice on how to apply for a donation for a raffle. The bubbly Janet explained how I had to apply and what type of stuff I could request. So my friend Tif made a gorgeous letterhead for our group and I was able to write up an official letter asking for garden donations for 1st prize. I was so thrilled when Janet from Bunnings called to say she gave us a wheelbarrow full of gardeners delights!!!

Donation from Bunnings!

Tif was able to get a 2nd prize of a Bokashi Composting Bucket from a local shop Eco Solutions (they also donated plates and cups to serve our goodies). And as a 3rd prize we have a box of fresh produce from the garden and a bottle of local honey that I was donated from a local bee keeper I know at Humpty Doo Apiaries.

Donation from Eco Solutions and Humpty Doo Apiaries.

I've never really asked for donations before and I started on an impulse with the honey, which built my courage up to ask Bunnings for a donation to. I'm so impressed and amazed with the goods we were donated and am very thankful. Our fundraiser brought our Snake Bean Community Garden more then $1000 in the 4 hours of selling raffle tickets, cake, tea, coffee, ice tea, plants, fresh produce and preserves. We will use the money for chicken feed (we have 5 chooks now!), a new sturdy ladder, maybe tools and other items to make our garden a happy educational and productive place for us and the general public.

Produce from the Garden on Sale.

As for Dolly, she spent roughly 4 hours with the chooks calling one Penny and nagging her to eat her spinach. The Rambling Expat went home early, did the dishes, did the laundry and cooked an amazing dinner in the slow cooker of locally hunted Magpie Geese from a fishing buddy.

Another happy frugal day, surrounded by happy people, jobs done at home and Dolly reveling in free play with her buddies outdoors. I plan on a quieter week this week and travel for work next week. How about you? Keeping up with the tightwads or competing with the Joneses?

A Subversive Plot: How to Grow a Revolution...

I saw this on Hazel Dene. It's complimented many of the books I have been reading lately. It's powerful and thought provoking so thought I should put it up to. Enjoy.

Jerusalem Artichoke

I harvested my 1st lot ever of jerusalem artichoke yesterday. They came from 1 plant which I bought in a hardware-gardening shop (Bunnings) about 4 months ago for about $6 if I remember correctly. I dug in deep in the soil with my hands and found 2 large and 4 small tubers in my garden plot in the botanical gardens.

1st harvest.

It's just after 10pm and I thought to myself I don't want to purchase any more plants if I can help it so I googled information on how to grow more from the tubers I have. I gathered enough information and found out tubers don't last long out of the ground. So within 5 minutes I was in the small garden plot (2 meters by 1 meter) that I created 2 weeks ago in our block of flats backyard, planting 4 pieces of tuber under the large black sky. And now 15 minutes latter I'm writing about it to you.

What a great source of information the internet can be when we use it to our positive and resourceful advantage. Have you found any great info on the net lately that was useful to your simple frugal eco living?

(By the way I decluttered a short but large (doorsize) table that was Dolly's craft/play table when she was a toddler. I gave it away on Freecycle so I'm ahead of my game.)

Look! I Received a Wonderful Gift Today!

Hello lovely readers. Today is just another day. No birthdays or special reason to celebrate. However when I arrived home today I found this surprise on my doorstep...

Bananas, Zucchini, Cucumber, Tomatoes, Green Beans, Winged Beans, Okra & Home Made Chutney!

Today's gift made me very happy, thrilled me to pieces and gave reason to feel like life is one lovely celebration. It fits with my want of Eco, Simple, Frugal and Local. Thanks Kelly and Carl! The gift was useful, delicious and beautifully presented too. A really really really nice surprise!!!

To know their labour and skills went into producing all of the fruit, vegetables and eggplant chutney made it even more special. Have you received anything this great before? Or placed a surprise like this, on someones doorstep? It's now tucked away in my brain as a great gift giving idea.

Please feel free to comment about your gift receiving and gift giving experiences. It's so interesting to know what your thoughts are. Your comments can be in any language you want. I know I have lots of readers from around the world (including many from France). So don't be shy.

Have a great day everyone :-)

Do You Give Peel?

Everyday I see people throw good looking peels and scraps at work. I thought what a waste of such great organic material! Its all going into landfill and releasing methane into the atmosphere!!!

Then I had a lightbulb moment. I went out and purchased a lidded box, wrote a message, stuck it on and placed it near the office lunchroom rubbish bin.

Office Lunch Scrap Bin

It has been a hit, including a nice little post it note telling me what a great idea it was. I have been taking a box full of lovely fruit and veggie peels to the compost bins at the Botanical Gardens Community Garden Plots every second day. The rubbish is now being turned into composted soil full of lovely rich nutrients. It's cheap and it's good for my planet and that makes me one happy girl indeed.

My Message To The Peelers and Scrapers.

Have you taken any "new" little eco-frugal steps lately?

When I'm Tired

Yesterday I felt deflated, tired and run down. No everyday is a rosy day and sometimes it all seems hard. And it is hard... to be a grown up, managing a home, organising a child and going to work everyday. Especially when you want to lead a life with minimal take out meals and a reduced ecological footprint - it takes a little bit more of an effort to not be wasteful.

Due to feeling blah and overwhelmed I decided to make a healthy dinner of salad only, instead of following my menu plan. So with a Lebanese cucumber from my garden and a green cucumber from Lesley's garden plot as a salad base, I chopped away and made a scrummy super healthy mood enhancing salad. I included with the 2 cucumbers:

• half an apple, 
• 1 large tomato, 
• 1 carrot, 
• 2 snake beans and
• a tiny bit of grated cheddar heese. 

From my fridge I used some tasty left over olive oil from a jar of feta cheese and a little left over vinegar from a jar of pickled onions. (Don't throw these out when the contents are finished - the oils and vinegars can be tasty and handy to use). The 3 of us really enjoyed the refreshing scrunchy salad and it's a great way to get raw veggies into my family.

Fresh, Quick and Healthy.

Lesley had kindly given me one of her green cucumbers because someone had taken one from my garden plot. It's frustrating and disappointing to have my limited produced taken by botanical garden visitors but that's what happens with gardens in public areas and I knew this would happen so will just need to try and grow more. And hopefully people who visit the gardens will be inspired to grow their own too just as I was.

My Lebanese Cucumber

Here's Dolly's lunch box number 2 for preschools morning tea. Butterfly sandwich with cheddar cheese and vegemite, a snake bean, a bit of chopped up carrot and 2 strawberries gifted from our neighbour Mr T. This term her class will be joining the main school for assemblies to get them into the habit of sitting and listening and integrating. My girl is growing so so so fast. I can't wait for next year where I will cut back my work hours by 2 hours per day so I can spend more time with her. At present she has been fighting me on nearly everything. It's exhausting and makes me feel sad. I never had any trouble or terrible 2's with her but boy-oh-boy is 4 turning her into a rebel (just with me)! I need to see it as her testing her own voice and hopefully she will turn into a leader and not a push over with others.

Morning Tea.

Oh and by the way, the snake was back on my eggplant again!!! He likes me and seems to want to stay living at my plot. I have found out from The Rambling Expats Snake Expert friend that he is definitely a tree snake and non venomous.

Snake in my eggplant. Here to stay?

Are some days hard for you too? What do you do if it's all just too hard?

Snakes, snakes and more snakes.

While I was watering my garden plot yesterday I took hold of some of my eggplant branches to inspect a branch that is dying. As I went to grab another branch I noticed a small branch that looked slightly different and pulled my hand away... just in case. I peered closer and yes just there, where I was about to grab was a tiny snake.

The snake was tiny and sweet looking. He was only about 40cm long. But I'm sure if I'd wrapped my hand around him he would not have been pleased with me at all.

3 different snakes in 2 weeks around my garden plot has turned me into slightly over paranoid. I am dreaming and seeing snakes everywhere, as is Dolly who thinks every watering hose looks like a snake.

There's a snake in my eggplants.

Looking straight at me.

The beauty of having seen 3 snakes in 2 weeks is that many are disappearing due to eating the introduced to Australia cane toads. So these are lucky sightings which one day may be not be possible anymore. Cane toads have been increasing in numbers in the Darwin region in the past 4 years, I no longer see goannas and blue tongue lizards in my neighbourhood. This is a terrible thing as the balance of food chain for the local wildlife has changed. We used to have a visiting blue tongue at our front door that we used to hand feed small pieces of meat and fruit, hoping to prevent him from eating a cane toad. He is now gone.

Any snakes in your favourite tramping ground? Are animals disappearing due to ecological disasters in your area?

Spending Less to Pay for Treats.

I did not spend on groceries in the past week as I had lots of treats planned. I used everything I could from fridge, cupboard and garden in the aim to spend $$$ on Bastille Day and also a day off to be with my daughter.

Here was our meals:

Monday - Garden: Green pawpaw salad with a dressing of garden herbs and spices.
Tuesday - Fridge: Vegetable soup cooked in slow cooker.
Wednesday - Neighbour: Dinner at my neighbours. I took entree of left over vegetable soup.
Thursday - Garden: Bastille Day BBQ. I took a very large bowl of sliced/marinated egg plant to BBQ and share. Yum!
Friday - Spent: 3 take away pizzas with vouchers.
Saturday - Cupboard and Garden: Pasta with a pesto made of many different herbs, egg plants and steamed greens.

Basket was B-Day gift from my partner The Rambling Expat.  

Pesto - Lemon balm, basil, chocolate mint, parsly, Thai coriander, ginger, lemon grass chilli. Parmesan and nuts.

Egg plant, 3 spinaches, asian greens.

My Dolly LOVES Caviar. 5 Star Taste On Shoe String Budget.

I spent roughly, $84:

• $18 for my office lunches, 
• $45 for a special morning tea at work (Bastille Day) of croissants, pain au chocolate French cheese and bread. 
• And the $21 for pizza take away.

I shouted my work colleagues a yummy morning tea and treated Dolly to a super special day of Sushi at one of her favourite restaurants and The Circus. This is one of the happy reasons I am frugal.

I am frugal because I am saving for retirement, cutting back my work hours in 2012, want to purchase a house but also save for those special things in our lives such as the Circus. Saving gets easier day by day as less things tempt me. But I did buy something... Hangs head in shame..... a $39 dual rubbish bin for my kitchen. Was it needed? NO. Was it wanted? YES, YES, YES. YES, YES.

How's your spending getting along? Feel comfortable spending on special outings and treats when you've saved your $$$. Or are you always feeling guilty?

Poo Poo

Some of my plants have been really struggling and I see other people's plots around me prospering. I try and not criticise myself and instead read books and tell myself it's a learning process and this gardening hobby is a hobby for life, I can skill up and grow as I learn bit by bit. I also don't want to blow huge amounts of my pay packet into the garden and I have done well so far restraining myself from buying all the pretty plants.

Being the eco-frugalista that I am, I refuse to fork out big bucks for sh*t from a company hundreds of kilometers away. I was thinking of heading out to the race tracks as I heard they have a manure bin where people can load up their buckets for free. But another gardener told me race horses are usually pumped up with "stuff" to make them excel at their job. So I decided to not go that way as I am not aiming for giant sized vegetables that will give me muscles in very strange places.

Another solution was to head to a property where city folks keep their horse. These are just regular horses owned and loved by individuals. Outside the property gates are bags of manure for only $2 that you just pop into an honesty box. And apparently if there are no bags of manure you can go in and ask if the Poo Fairy will fill a bag for you. Now that is my kind of Fairy. A win win all round. I get cheap sh*t and the horse owners get a few bucks to put towards their horses, it's local and the plants love it.

My Little Fairy was hoping to meet the Poo Fairy.

Another eco-frugal thing I did for my garden was head out to a work colleague's home out bush as she had old chicken wire and metal stakes she no longer needed and were gathering dust and rust. I was very thrilled to get my hands on it and can't wait to set some of it up this weekend as I prepare my garden to the wet season. As a bonus Dolly loved her visit out bush and got to ride a mower.

Dolly Driving a Lawn Mower.

How do you enrichen your garden soil?
Do you splurge or keep it cheap?