Music Making

Steve and I have had this random branch that came off one of our trees under the house for a while now. We kept it because it was almost perfectly straight, and quite long. Surely it would have some future purpose in our garden, we rationalized. I don't know what happened really, but for some reason a few weeks ago now, in the afternoon, I was suddenly taken with the notion to use that long straightish branch.

I'd seen a bunch of music wall things on the internet and had been tossing the idea of making my own around in my head for a while. Where to put it and what would go on it were always the biggest stumbling blocks. Anyway, I ended up just taking hold of that long piece of wood and drilling some holes into it. I used some wire we had (I don't quite remember why we got it) to loop it up to the fence and then proceeded to raid all of the spare bits we had lying around near Steve's manly tool chest of manly tools.

It was really cool to see I could actually get things that would make noise out of stuff we had lying around. A lot of it came from our old bathroom that we reno-ed when we bought the house nearly five years ago now! Talk about saving things for the right moment. My favourite things are the old tap handles that actually ring when you spin them. So lovely.

The seed pods were from down the street - I think we had cracked them open that afternoon. I'm not sure how long they will last, but they are provided good contrast in sound and visuals at the moment. The next day I added the jingle bells onto things (that were a hand-me-on from my friend Melissa who went to Canada).

It was really a work in progress, because I didn't add the plastic Ikea knives until a few days after that too. I found them in a drawer and realised we'd never used them. The music wall needed some colour so on they went.

The kids like to play on it, but I'm thinking I need to add some tins down the bottom that they can bang on to really get some noise out of. There is another branch that has kind of come off a tree down the street that I've got my eye on. I went down on Sunday arvo to try to pull it off, but it's still hanging on by a thread.

I realise now that none of these photos really show you where this is in the backyard or in relation to the play wall or the sandpit. Sorry. It is up the back and I am planning on revamping the garden bed up there to make it into a fairy garden and add some stepping stones for the kids to sit on, so maybe if that comes to fruition, I'll take more photos and it will make more sense.

In any case, it's in the back corner, under the shade of a big tree and a tall fence. Win.

Play Board

Over the Christmas holidays, Steve and I got a bit handy with the water play board we'd made in October last year. It's still not totally finished, but we are pretty happy with how it works right now. It's a little more permanent than the containers that were staple gunned on originally.

I'm hoping to add another pipe that runs down from the right side of the top pipe down to where Rachel is standing. The idea is that it will have small holes in it for water to trickle through to the big leaf catcher that's below, but still be able to feed balls to the pipe on the left.

Coincidently, that pipe on the left (in the middle) is actually completely level. We aren't exactly sure how it happened, but the momentum that the balls have going into it mean that they tend to roll down it just fine, so it's ok! Hooray!

Paula's Outing

This is Paula. Paula lives in a house which has a lovely backyard.

One day, Paula decided to go and spend some time in the backyard.

"Can I come too?" said Sophie.

"Yes," Paula said, "as long as you use the toilet first."

"Will you take me?" asked Rachel.

"Yes, but you'll have to wear your shoes."

"May I come along, Aunty Paula?" said Hugo.

"Of course," Paula replied, "provided you're not too tired."

For a while, they all enjoyed being outside in the lovely backyard. But then, Sophie needed to use the toilet, but refused to go inside, Rachel took off her shoes, and was bitten by an ant, and Hugo fell asleep in the swing.

Then, Paula, Sophie, Rachel and Hugo all went back inside the house together.

"Don't worry," said Paula, "we'll try to play outside in the lovely backyard another day."

Thank you to Mr Gumpy's Outing by John Burningham for providing the foundation for this story, and Sophie, Rachel and Hugo for the inspiration. 

So while Steve was on holidays last week, he had some boys around and did some hard backyard action. It was a crazy backyard blitz working bee that lasted most of the day (and actually didn't really get finished until 5 days later, but no one is complaining about that, least of all me. :) ). 

John and Wade turned up pretty early and pulled out some trees around the front before the came round the back and got started with the BBQ. I was thinking the BBQ would take quite a bit of time, but they managed to pull apart the bessablocks like pros and the whole thing came apart like lego really. 

All the bessablocks are stacked under the stairs now. Ready to be a garden edging or a bookshelf. :D 

The boys also took out the large chunk of cement that has always lived in the middle of our yard for no apparent reason. Again, something we were thinking would take a long long time, but actually was just a matter of levering it up. Sarah's Steve turned up to help then too. You can see the bit I did in this photo.  I lopped off most of a tree at the very back corner and then sharpened an axe. It was a quality contribution to the day. Then I contented myself with providing refreshments and food for the hard workers. 

Good thing Melissa and Sarah were around to help lift the drainage into the trench the boys dug. This was probably the most time consuming part of the day. They took out more trees and dug the trench and then figured out how to put the drain together before they mixed the cement and put it all in.

We were short just a bit of cement, but Steve and I finished that off after another few trips to Bunnings. Backyard work seems to compound on itself quite easily. Digging the trench leads to putting the drain in, which meant that we had to sledge part of the fence cement on the side to put the drain around the house, which then needs to be joined up with the storm water drain, so we need to dig another trench and get some more pipe and take out another tree to do all that. It goes on and on. Thankfully it's all mostly back in order now. Going to get some Sir Walter for the big brown patch in the middle of the lawn. Too bad I didn't get more of the garden bed cleaned up before pregnancy became too much for me. Oh well.