Building consent!

Well it only took 11 months but we have finally received building consent from the shire. Here's a breakdown.

November 2012 - first viewed the block

December 2012 - exchanged contract of sale

February 2013 - settled the contract for sale, extended time was owing to the titles office stamping new division and modifying maps etc.

Engaged architect to help with council submission, Structual details and enviro entail impact statement. (More on this later. )

March through August 2013 - design, budget, change design, budget, throw out design, design, budget help!

August 2013 - submit final design to council.

October 2013 - approval!

Construction certificate is still pending waiting on engenieers details. Next week?

Below is the sunset from last night.

Smokey! Early start to the brushfire season this year.

What a strange thing!

“What a strange thing!
to be alive beneath cherry blossoms."

The past two weeks of spring have seen unrivaled beauty burst to life up at the block. Our flowering plums down the length of the driveway all blossomed and quickly turned and have grown new leaves.
The ornamental pear at the top of the block is still blossoming and is humming with bees. The plums all over town are quite a sight, and make great "snow" see pic of Joscelyn below outside of school and Augie with the pear.

Other great new this week regarding plants at the block, all our fruit trees have come back after being devastated by rabbits earlier in the winter :-(

Last week we heard from council at the closure of the feedback period for our house plans. No complaints! Yeah!
We had to supply additional information regarding storm water management but I hope that was satisfactory. Will find out real soon I suspect.

Also, what is spring with out the Cowra show! The tea cups were the highlight for abs and I got to take Jos on the dodgems.

Also a before and after of the pruning pile.

Coop update III

Well, more progress has been made but I've lost control of the coop as it has been invaded by girls! It's currently full of dolls and "making house" type stuff. >:(

On an up-note the girls love playing in it.

We finished three garden beds that are attached to the backside of the dry stone wall. They got a good mattock'ing compost and some improved topsoil.
They're now ready to receive plants. Worried about loosing everything we plant to waskaly wabbits, so will fence of the garden ASAP.

We camped up at the block the other day now that the nights are getting Warner too. Great fun, until bed time:-(
Try again soon, but will take the night light for the tin lids.

On a side note. The photo below shows a very effective method of getting in a quick nine holes with a three year old! Played ok 44 for 9 holes (8 over.)

Also managed to finish a gift this weekend. A blackwood cutting board.
Turned out real nice. Liza wants on now too. 

Coop progress 2

Well winter came and went and still we've not got too much further on the coop.
Until last weekend that is!
We have the bones of the enclosed run and doors!!!

Spring has also bought the bees!
I've placed a photo of our drive way at the bottom of this post, it shows the trees in blossom. Each tree was absolutely laden with flowers and the bees! Oh my so many bees. Each tree had very loud hum of busy bees. Awesome :-p

Nature knows no pause...

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her self to all inaction.

From where I was standing the last few weeks, it seemed as though I was starting to be over run with an impossibly invasive ivy vine, darkening my skies and strangling my passion for the building design process.

But, owing dogged persistence and willingness to never sleep more than about 4 hours per night, we submitted the Development Application to the council today! And paid their exorbitant fees...

So it's predicted that it should take about 3 weeks, we'll see I guess.

Even if I knew..

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces. I would still plant my apple tree.

Guess what? Yeah, we planted our apple trees, a Granny Smith, a heirloom something something red? some citrus, including a lime, a lemon, an orange, and a williams pear.
We lost light whilst planting so didn't bother with putting the protective net around and in short order, wouldn't you know it, by the next morning the lime and lemon where reduced to twigs! I hope they come back once spring returns.

My mum and dad visited in the school holidays and helped us nut out a few issues with our plans, which are getting closer all of the time (Thanks dad). We all got stuck into clearing the house plot somewhat, felling two trees and removing about three tones of granite boulders, that will go into our garden wall.

Nanny did some knitting whilst she was down and you can see the picture of my youngest in her new outfit, thanks (mum)

An annoying amount of weird shaped heavy arse rocks and being reduced to working alone means, that I needed some help, so i came up with this lifter.
Using the equation F1*L1 = F2*L2.  I figure that the small rock in the picture is about 60kg!

Rock splitting video

A recent rock split.