Well it's been madness here! We have genuine honest to God frogs in the pond, egg-producing chooks and raspberries.

I'm so looking forward to Easter, by then I'll be down to only one job, studying will be under control, I'll have holidayed and it will suddenly seem doable again. At the moment I'm struggling with two jobs and two courses, plus a couple of out of work projects.

Last week I got the health stuff out of the way; the tests themselves were unpleasant, but the results were pretty good. We have a theory about the iron deficiency, and we're treating it with iron supplements, so I'm back to where I was beforehand but with a diagnosis.

Tags: Chooks, Fruit, Health, Work, Study

The weekend started up a ladder, then on top of the pergola rearranging the female chinese gooseberry. I've disentangled her from the willow and now she's now draped across the supports, so if the willow branch goes she'll survive. Next week I'll feed her; which will mean pulling back the decaying branches around her roots, putting a bag of zoodoo, some blood and bone, and a couple of grow tabs down, before putting the branches back.

I've never really understood why the female was planted at the shady end, but with a little bit of spoiling she should start doing as well as the male.

In the photo as well as the pond and the chinese gooseberry there are the squash (planted by the base of the male), three Guinée roses, and the two Adam elderberries planted last year. The elderberries have survived remarkably well given the earth moving equipment that hung out there for a while.

The chooks kept me busy, having worked out how to get over the low fences on the raspberry and blueberry beds, so there was quite a lot of chasing followed by some fencing improvements. I'm trying to work out what is enough for them, I've added a couple of strings to the top of the 65cm fence around the raspberry bed taking the total height to more like 85cm.The chooks can definitely fly that high, but they don't seem to like the fact they can't land on the string so it's working so far.

I also took out the last of the spinach and corn salad, and shortened the row of carrots (carrot soup!) which left me enough room to put in a punnet of spinach and another of silverbeet. There'll also be room for a few more rows of beans, which I'm planning to plant fortnightly. The last bit of planting was a punnet of cornflowers in the blueberry bed to replace some pansies.

Watering everything is turning into a bit of a mission, particularly as I haven't found the energy this weekend to put in as many watering lines as I'd hoped. The squash, tomatoes, and black-, boysen- and goose- berries are still being watered by hand. The rest are either on watering lines or can be reached by the sprinkler. So quite a lot of hose dragging. I did manage watering lines for the herb garden and blueberry bed though, both of which seem to be working well.

On the down side I'm anaemic and overworked and spent a lot of the weekend napping, so not as much progress as I'd've hoped. I have the next two days off work, so I should be able to make a little more progress, perhaps even get more of the front path weeded!

Tags: Chinese Gooseberry, Veges, Pond, Chooks, Watering, Health