Today I took dad to the block and I left him go about his business in the garden whilst I barrow’ed dirt into a big low spot , I kept one eye on what dad was up to and he had at some stage used his big sieve to screen mulch , and I noticed earlier that with the big bits he had leftover he had just dumped them on the outside of the garden fence raising my suspicions about the reason,
hmm maybe he thinks that once the outside is accidentally mulched that he will eventually plant on the outside , was my thought ,
so he bucketed the fine mulch onto the trellis garden bed and then he raked it out so he could transplant his Swede seedlings.
He then asked me to do a job for him and till up the dirt pile so he could plant pumpkins in it when it’s time ,
I told him that he has to plant things inside his garden and that I was actually using all of that dirt to fill the holes on the block ,
He thought about it for a while and then a bit later told me that after lunch he doesn’t need me there anymore ,
I said let’s see what mum says first
So we had lunch ,
Dad has a burn pile of pallets and tree branches at the end of his block that I have suggested that we get rid of and burn as I have the number to ring in my phone to authorise the burn off.
While we had lunch it was talked about with mum and we decided to burn it off,
So a little bit of a history with dad and burning off , he liked it ,
we lived in the middle of town on McKenzie St where Evan’s service station is and the block next door was a vacant lot , now Outlook drive , every year when the grass was long and it would die off the old man would light it up armed just with a shovel ,
Every time he lit it up the fire brigade would attend and put out the remaining fire , this happened for quite a number of years at least up until the road was built.
So if you keep that in mind we then headed back to the block and dad prepared for the burn off getting the fire water out of the shed ,
I rang the authorities and got the green light to light it , a splash of fire water and a bit of paper and we were a way ,
So I basically collected more bits of rubbish timber and added them onto the fire ,
I looked at dad who was at the brick pile with a trolley carting out all of the plastic pipes that were laying next to it and stacking them at the drain , I couldn’t work out what he was up to but I should have clicked ,
He came over to me when done and said have you got your lighter ,
he wanted to burn the grass around the brick pile , the penny had suddenly dropped and I thought unbelievable but I did what he asked and lit it up .
I left him to attend to his grass fire and when it was finished there was still a little fire burning on one corner of the stack.
Dad was a bit concerned that he couldn’t put it out and we would have to unstack the bricks to get to it
What had happened is that the bricks were on a plastic pallet that had caught fire underneath and dad had tried water so I grabbed the shovel and slashed up the mud and water and doused the flames
By this time dad had had enough and asked to go home .
One thing for sure the garden and the block is looking great ,
Maybe a bit singed in parts but looking great
Cheers