So, Moving Molly (Part 1) showed a bloody great massive piece of concrete in our garden, right where I wanted to put Molly. FYI, for those of you who have never read my blog, Molly is a grevillea. I told Dad about this concrete, along with the blocked storm water pipe that runs next to it (which is a whole other story), and he got all excited about coming over to help. I was working 12 hour shifts on both Saturday and Sunday that weekend, so jokingly suggested that Dad take the day off work on Wednesday to come and help. Dad has about 10 years worth of sick leave saved up – he never takes time off work. But Wednesday just happened to be a day when a big, long meeting was most likely going to be cancelled, freeing up his schedule. So, you guessed it, the meeting was officially cancelled and he came around to help. His PA was rather concerned that the one time he decides to take the day off work is so he can hit things and asked if he was ok. FYI, he’s ok. It’s just fun hitting stuff 🙂
I WhatsApped him the night before asking if he would come over at some ridiculously early hour and whether I should set an alarm. Dad is a morning person to say the least. I am not. Dad replied with “Don’t worry. Late as ;)”. I should’ve taken the winky face more seriously because apparently we have different definitions of ‘ridiculously early’ and ‘late as’. Dad bounded in at 8am (thankfully bearing coffee!) with his brand new sledge hammer, saying, “Apparently Bunnings doesn’t open till 7am!” I, of course, was still in bed. 8am was actually pretty reasonable. It probably almost killed Dad to not get here earlier!
So, Dad got out his shiny new sledge hammer and started belting to crap out of the concrete. We had decided before this point that it wasn’t anything important like a sewer pipe and was most likely an old garden edge, so we (slash Dad) could beat the crap out of it without too much worry that poo would spurt out in our faces.
We were a bit worried that it’d be full of reo, but it was actually fairly soft (but still concrete and therefore bloody hard). Dad did some serious damage with his sledge hammer. I just stood there taking videos of him with my phone. It’s kind of a one person job and I certainly didn’t want to get in the way! Then he got out his chisel and beat the crap out of the chisel until the concrete eventually broke through. It just kept going!
This is where Dad got silly and started trying to lift the bloody thing out of the garden despite my constant protests. He bloody well did it though. He lifted it bit by bit while I shoved chocks under it and he freaked out that he would drop it on my hands and told me to get my hands out of the way and I told him to just not drop it. We got it to this height, then Dad channeled his superpowers and lifted it on its end, then rolled it out of the garden.
We of course found more concrete to chisel and dig out in the process. We had to cut this carefully because this bit of concrete is actually part of an existing garden edge. But we got it. Note: when I say we I mean Dad.
Superpowers channeled and all the concrete is out. All this so we could move Molly into the garden! But before this could happen, we exposed the storm water pipe and did some diagnostics as to why it was blocked. The conclusion: we needed a plumber. This exciting story to come….
A few weeks on: the storm water pipe is fixed and Molly is planted. She looks taller because she was on a funny angle in her last place and now she’s standing straight and tall. Her roots weren’t as abundant as I hoped but we managed to move her without damaging too many. She’s had a long drink and has some native plant soil mixed in with our normal soil. Fingers crossed!!
I worked up a sweat in the garden today, not just moving Molly, but other general garden stuff. Nothing like a long, hot shower whilst drinking a nice, cold, microbrewery beer to end a good day’s work! Ah.. 🙂
Gardener Jen 